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

by Melissa Scott

  "Try me."

  Rodney shook his head. The stars were very bright. The auroras that had concealed them were gone with the tilting of the world on its axis, gone to come again next year. "It was Elizabeth," he said finally. "Elizabeth Weir. She was there with me on the jumper. I know it can't really have been her. I know that. But it was. Elizabeth was there." Rodney put his hands in his pockets. "She said she'd be there until the end, that she wouldn't leave no matter what. I remember...." He took a deep breath. "I remember the radiation alarms going off and the shield failing and then.... I woke up in the Hammond's infirmary. That's all I know." He shrugged. "You don't believe me."

  "Actually I do." Sam's eyes glittered in the dim light. "When Daniel was Ascended, something a lot like that happened. But he got in a lot of trouble. The other Ascended beings kicked him out. They dropped him off on some random planet not even remembering who he was. Because he helped us. Because he interfered."

  Rodney took a long, cool breath of sea air and something in his chest loosened, something he didn't know he'd held for far too long. "You think it was Elizabeth?"

  "I do."

  "And you think she could be out there somewhere?"

  "She could be," Sam said. "Or maybe she didn't get caught. But if she did, yeah. She's out there somewhere."

  Rodney took another breath, longer and deeper. "We could find her," he said.

  "We could. We never leave a man behind." Sam put his arm awkwardly around his shoulder and Rodney twisted to look at her skeptically.

  "You did not just hug me."

  "No." Sam stepped back. "I didn't."

  "Because if you did, I'm never going to let you forget it."

  "It was a friendly hug!"

  "Now I know how you really feel about me."

  "I feel like I want to squash you like a bug!" Sam said, but she was laughing.

  "Come on now. You know it's always been me!" Rodney was grinning.

  "In a pig's eye. If it had been up to me, the Wraith could have kept you!"

  "Yeah, sure," Rodney laughed, and then his stomach sank. Jennifer had come out of the nearest building and was walking toward them, her hair in a ponytail and the dark leathers of her field clothes making her look already far away.

  If Sam could have dematerialized she would have. "I've got some stuff to do," she said quickly, stepping away as Teyla also turned, her hand falling from Todd's arm. "Teyla? All set?"

  "I believe that I am," Teyla said serenely, coming to join them.

  "Jennifer," Rodney said.

  "Rodney."

  "Then let's go check out that thing we were talking about earlier," Sam said to Teyla. "You know, the thing I wanted you to look at."

  "I believe I do," Teyla said, and shook her head at Rodney as she followed Sam toward the door.

  Todd still stood on the ramp, turned toward them, impassive beneath the faint bluish running lights of the cruiser.

  And now there weren't any words, not any good enough. "Jennifer," he said again, and then fell silent. He wanted to tell her that she was crazy for doing this. He wanted to promise her that if she would just stay he wouldn't ask her to marry him again, that he would take things as slowly as she wanted. But there weren't any words.

  She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face as though she were looking for something, or maybe she wanted to remember it. "I'll be fine," she said.

  "Sure," he said. "You'll do great."

  "I need to do this, Rodney."

  "I can see that. If the retrovirus works, if people will accept it – well, people and Wraith, I suppose I should say ..."

  "I think you mean people. Humans and Wraith."

  "People," Rodney said. "If they do, you'll be saving a lot of lives."

  "Well, I'm going to try," Jennifer said. She looked ridiculously young and slight in her black leathers, not like Teyla, not scary. But not like a girl either. Just a lot like Alabaster.

  "It's just ...." He couldn't quite finish the thought. "I thought you wanted to go back to Earth," he said. "I thought you wanted to get married and live in a suburb or maybe in the country somewhere and practice medicine and.... I thought you were the one who didn't want to come back to Pegasus. I thought you wanted...." He waved his hands at all the things he couldn't name. "Strawberries. You keep saying you miss strawberries and there aren't any in Pegasus. And daylilies. You know. Those yellow flowers. Or the red ones."

  "Poppies," Jennifer said. "They have those here. I've seen them."

  "I haven't," Rodney said.

  "When do you ever look at the plants?"

  "When they're trying to eat me," Rodney said. "But that's beside the point. You don't even like it here. And there are leeches. You hate leeches. And it's a long way from your dad, and you don't even have email, and...."

  She put her hand on his arm. "Rodney."

  "Yes?"

  "I want to do this." Her eyes were very clear. "When I get back ... maybe then I'll want to go home and have all those things. In their time. But right now it's time for me to do this."

  "I can't wait forever," he said quietly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not old, but I'm not getting any younger. I was hoping we could get married here in Atlantis, maybe even – well, after all, Teyla has Torren, and how much more trouble would having one more child in the city be? Woolsey let me keep the cat." He couldn't ask the question, but he hoped she heard it anyway.

  "You take care of Newton, all right?" It wasn't an answer, or maybe it was. They had never been very good at finding words. "I'm doing what I need to do. You should do what you need to do."

  "I will," he said.

  "You always do."

  There wasn't any answer to that. And so he smiled at her like a sturdy adventurer ought to. "Take care of yourself," he said, and gave her a sketchy salute. "And if you need anything, just whistle."

  "I'll remember that," Jennifer said. She pulled herself up, shoulders squared, and gave him a little smile.

  And then she turned and walked across the tarmac toward the cruiser, toward the dark figure at the foot of the ramp. He loomed over her, bending to speak, and then she went past him up the ramp, her head high and her back straight, Todd following after. Jennifer didn't look back. The ramp retracted and the docking port irised closed, blue lights winking out. Wind gusted as the cruiser’s thrusters came online.

  Sam and Teyla were still standing in the doorway to the building, whatever pretend errand of Sam's forgotten, and Rodney hurried out of the landing zone as the cruiser's engines rose in a rising whine, the wind swirling around him.

  Teyla put her hand on his arm, steel presence comforting as sunlight. "She will be all right," Teyla said.

  "I know." He'd thought this was the story of how he turned himself into a hero and got the girl and they lived happily ever after. And maybe that story hadn't really been about the girl at all, but only about becoming a person he could be proud of when he looked in the mirror. He had done that, and sometimes it took him by surprise to realize it.

  Teyla looked up at him. "Do you wish you were going with her?

  "On a Wraith ship?" But there was some part of him that ached for that still, and wondered if walking aboard the cruiser would have felt like coming home. I'm already home, he told himself, and knew that for him that was true. "Don't be silly," he said briskly. "Besides, do you have any idea how much work I have to do?"

  There was only a little lump in his throat as he watched the cruiser Eternal lift into the darkness and vanish over the storm tossed sea, a darkness against the stars which swiftly disappeared.

  It was a day of rest, and the captain of the Hammond was going fishing.

  "How's that?" Sam said.

  "Not too bad," Jack said. "If I reposition a little...."

  "Move around all you like," Sam said. She unfolded her chair and sat down, propping her feet up on the low stonework of the edge of the pier.

  Jack moved his chair around a little more, fussing with it, then sat down and adjusted
his baseball cap, looking out at the calm sea.

  Sam sighed happily. "Look at that! Almost worth coming all the way out here for, isn't it?"

  "Almost," Jack said.

  Sam shrugged as he baited his line neatly and cast. "Yeah, but not many guys can say they've dipped their pole where you have."

  He stopped, the rod dangling in his fingers. "I can't believe you just said that, Carter."

  "Fishing, Jack." She cast her line with a smug look, watching it plop satisfactorily into the water next to his.

  "I think I've got a bite already," he said, leaning forward.

  The end of his pole bobbed, then a tentacle rose from the surface of the water, exactly the same shade as the fishing line. It waggled back and forth, then purposefully wrapped around the end of the pole and jerked it out of Jack's hand, disappearing into the depths.

  "I'll be damned," Jack said as Sam started laughing.

  "I guess we'll just have to enjoy the view," she said.

  Supposedly, it was a day of rest, and the morning stretched before Teyla invitingly empty. She cradled her coffee mug in her hands, her elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, looking out at sea and clear skies. It was warm enough that she was comfortable in a light jacket. This passed for a beautiful spring day here, on their new world, and she could not say it was otherwise.

  The doors slid open and John came out, his sweatshirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a mug in his hands. "I thought I'd find you out here," he said.

  "I am enjoying the sunshine," she said, tilting her face up to the light, feeling it warm on her own skin.

  "This planet is starting to grow on me," he said, taking a sip. "There might be some interesting stuff here. We've only just started going through that Ancient installation Ronon found on the island. Now that we've got some time, maybe we can actually do some exploring."

  "It would be a nice change," Teyla said.

  "There's an awful lot we could do," John said. "Next year or the year after. And when that Indian research vessel launches I expect they're going to want to leave a team here. And Jackson was saying that there needed to be a bigger social sciences presence."

  "I expect Alabaster will want a permanent envoy," Teyla said. "And Jinto is annoying Halling, begging that Dr. Zelenka would like him to be his apprentice, if Mr. Woolsey will allow it."

  "That could work," John said, leaning on the rail beside her, looking out over the light-touched towers. "There's plenty of room in Atlantis."

  "For all the children of the Ancestors," Teyla said. And that was right and good. They were all heirs to the Ancients, all heirs to their pain and their hubris and their beauty and their insatiable curiosity.

  "Yeah," John said. He looked contented.

  "And you," Teyla said. "You are talking about the future as though you mean to see it."

  He lifted his head, his eyes on the distance. "I guess so," he said slowly. "When I was getting ready to go on this last mission to get rid of the weapon, I didn't want to."

  He said it as though it were a painful admission, and Teyla looked at him sideways. "Of course you didn't want to."

  "I didn't want to die. I had to do it, but I didn't want it. I don't want…." He trailed off, and Teyla waited in silence, waiting for him to find the words. "I didn't want life to be over. And now that it's not, it feels like a reprieve. Like some guy waiting on death row and then finding out he's been pardoned. If that makes any sense."

  "It does," she said. Teyla blinked into the sun, because of course it was that the glare hurt her eyes. "You were willing to be the sacrifice, and then you did not have to be. You have broken the geas. You have left it behind. And now there is your life before you."

  "Maybe so," he said, and took a drink of coffee. "Maybe so." The wind tugged at his hair, and he smiled into the eye of the wind.

  "And in us the Ancients have secured their future also; you, Ronon, even Rodney, might father a child one day."

  "Pretty scary," John said. "Rodney being a father, I mean…"

  Teyla smiled. "I would not be sorry to have another child someday myself."

  "It probably wouldn't have the gift, not like you and Torren…"

  "Nor would Rodney's, I think. Nor would any child of yours likely have a naturally expressed ATA gene," she said, leaning against the rail beside him. "They would all be only human."

  And yet both legacies would live in their blood, recessives carried forward down the centuries, the inheritance of the Ancients.

  The doors slid open again and Ronon came out, checking when he saw them. "Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

  "Come on out, Ronon," John said. "It's a beautiful day."

  "Please," Teyla said.

  Ronon came over and stood against the rail beside John, taking a deep breath and seeming to straighten up from somewhere deep inside, looking out at sky and sea. "It is," he said.

  "I was thinking that we needed to finish checking out that Ancient outpost you found," John said. "How about taking an archaeological team over there tomorrow?"

  "Sure," Ronon said, and smiled.

  John returned Ronon's smile, and then turned to gaze out at the white-capped sea that stretched out to meet the bright sky arching overhead. It was a good place for Atlantis, John thought, and good flying weather. He was itching to take a jumper up into it, to explore without the constant worry he'd felt since Rodney had first been captured by the Wraith.

  The balcony door slid open as if in answer to his thought, and Rodney came out onto the balcony, pulling his jacket around him in the brisk breeze. He hesitated, and John beckoned him over to the balcony. Rodney leaned on the railing, his elbows next to Teyla's, his white hair catching the light. It was still weird, but John figured if it didn't grow back in brown, they'd all get used to it.

  He glanced over at Ronon, who'd been visibly tense about dealing with Rodney ever since they'd gotten him back from the Wraith. Ronon seemed at ease, looking out over the railing at the horizon, his hair stirring in the breeze.

  "So I've been thinking that we should investigate the Ancient outpost over on the island," Rodney said. "I'm not convinced there's nothing interesting left over there."

  "Way ahead of you," John said. "But not today. We're taking today off."

  "What, you don't think searching for Ancient technology is fun?"

  Ronon looked at Rodney sideways down the rail. "Remember the man-eating bears?"

  "We don't know that they're man-eating."

  "They looked like they wanted to eat us."

  "The cave-in probably took care of all the bears, right?"

  Ronon shook his head, but he looked amused. "We should check it out when it's not our day off. I won't let the bears eat you."

  "Thank you," Rodney said. "Thank you very much." His tone was a little too serious.

  Ronon shrugged. "You're my team. All three of you."

  "No one is letting bears eat anyone," John said. "And today is a nice day, and we do not have to deal with any bears today."

  "Sometimes I wonder how we wound up having a life where that's a normal thing for someone to say," Rodney said.

  John looked up at the clear blue sky, remembering with sharp clarity the moment when he'd flipped a coin high into another sunny sky, trusting his future to its fall.

  "We walked through the Stargate," he said. He'd chosen then without knowing what he was getting into, or even what he wanted. He knew now, and he'd make the same choice now, open-eyed, every time. "I think that was a pretty good choice."

  "I believe it was, too," Teyla said, and she leaned into the circle of his arm.

  Beyond the balcony, the sea stretched out sparkling until it met the blue arch of the sky, as blue as the rising towers of Atlantis, bright and wide and waiting for them.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

 
Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven