SGA 22 Legacy 7 Unascended

by Jo Graham

  “That’s true,” Daniel said more brightly.

  “I think we’re losing sight of the priority here,” Rodney said. “We’re looking for Elizabeth.”

  John folded his hands on the table deliberately. “No,” he said. “We’re looking for Ancient installations. That’s what we found. Too bad the Asgard did too. But nobody was hurt, and we’re no worse off than we started.”

  “I just think this is connected,” Rodney said. “If the Asgard are trying to find an Unascension device at the same time that Elizabeth is missing and maybe Unascended…”

  “Maybe it is,” John said with frustration. “But do you have any bright ideas about how to find the Asgard ship? I thought not. So let’s get on with what we’re actually doing. Everybody stand down, get some rest, and tomorrow we’ll talk about the next site.”

  Nobody moved.

  John got up. “Meeting over. Good night.”

  “I just…” Rodney began.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “OK.”

  Daniel got up, opening his laptop and showing it to Rodney. “Can we talk about these three places on the list?” They went out with their heads alarmingly together.

  Ronon tilted his chair down. “Want to grab some dinner?” he asked Teyla.

  “Perhaps I will be down in a few minutes,” Teyla said. She lagged behind as Ronon went out.

  John sat down on the edge of the table as the doors slid closed. “What’s up?”

  Teyla shook her head, a fond smile on her face. “Have you had such trouble leading the team for years? Ronon and Rodney are bad enough, but when there is Dr. Jackson and Ember…” She spread her hands. “I feel that I spend all my time shouting.”

  John laughed. “That’s pretty much it. It’s herding cats. Always has been.”

  She took a step closer, inclining her head to his in Athosian courtesy. “I did not realize the difficulties involved.”

  “Kind of makes you appreciate me more,” John said with a smile.

  Richard Woolsey stood in the conference room at Stargate Command, watching the gate turn, a regularly scheduled offworld team returning. It was a little after 06.00 Mountain Time. He’d spent the night in SGC guest quarters, which he had to say were a lot more comfortable than the first time he’d been here. Then, they’d been bunk beds in a concrete room painted olive drab. Now they were a lot like a budget hotel complete with queen beds with pastel quilts and framed prints of scenic beaches on the wall. Possibly this was intended to put guests at ease. Certainly there were no beaches anywhere nearby.

  Woolsey took a sip of his scalding coffee. One thing that hadn’t changed was the coffee. This was as thick as if it had been sitting on the hotplate all night. Which it probably had.

  He paced around the empty conference table, empty and waiting for the next crisis. Everything was very quiet. The bulletproof glass cut out the sounds of the gateroom below entirely. Beyond the head of the conference table the Stargate Command insignia was mounted on the wall, proud encouragement to those who found themselves here for the first time. On the right hand wall was a different kind of plaque

  —

  a list of names. Most of them he didn’t know: Spec. Robert Riley, Spec. Louise Fernandez, Lt. Aidan Ford. Some he did. Dr. Janet Fraiser. Dr. Elizabeth Weir.

  Woolsey took another sip of the terrible coffee. Was it possible that Dr. Weir was alive, as unlikely as that seemed? The answer was probably no. There was no evidence, no reason to think so other than the wishful thinking of a man who had himself been a prisoner of war and then recovered. McKay wanted her to be alive. Everyone wanted her to be alive. Understandably. Death was hard to accept, and doubly so when one felt responsible for the death. But that didn’t make her alive. The Atlantis expedition had to face the facts. Elizabeth Weir was not coming back.

  Woolsey sighed. Sheppard would come to that. He wouldn’t let them spend too much time on a wild goose hunt. It was time to move on.

  Just as it was time for him to move on. It was time for him to stop thinking of himself as a member of the Atlantis expedition and to start thinking of himself as a member of the IOA

  —

  the US representative to the IOA. His was the position of responsibility, and it was time to take what he’d learned and put it to good use. There was no going back. It was time to go forward. He had the briefing files on this new fiasco, the loss of an experimental base and its personnel, the armed hostilities with the Lucian Alliance that ensued, the loss of several of the Hammond’s 302s in the subsequent fight. He needed to get a handle on that. What the gate team in Atlantis did was no longer his job.

  Richard Woolsey squared his shoulders. The names looked back at him from the wall. I will do my best, he promised silently. I’ll make sure you weren’t wasted.

  An Airman cleared his throat from the doorway. “Mr. Woolsey? Your car is ready to take you to Peterson, sir.”

  “I’m coming,” Woolsey said. He put the coffee cup down on the conference table and left it there.

  SGA-22 Unascended

  INTERLUDE

  It was several hours before they had seen all the injured, including a man who had been shot in the leg and lost a lot of blood. He wasn’t the worst injured, though. That went to a woman who had been hit in the head with a rifle butt and hadn’t regained consciousness since. Dekaas arranged to transport her onto the Durant where he had more equipment, shaking his head as he did so. He had no words of comfort for her kin, only that he’d try. Elizabeth watched them go up the elevator to the airlock, the woman wrapped in a blanket on a pallet, Dekaas and her two teenage daughters, their faces pale and pinched with worry.

  “She tried to fight back,” Fenna said. “Always a mistake.”

  Elizabeth didn’t reply. She took a deep breath, warming her hands against her sleeves.

  “So you wanted to use our gate to dial out?” Fenna asked.

  “If you’ll permit it,” Elizabeth said. “But Dekaas asked me to keep an eye on the injured down here while he tends to her, so I’m not leaving just yet.”

  “Fair enough,” Fenna said. “You can trade your help for the use of our gate.”

  “That’s a deal,” Elizabeth said, putting out her hand.

  After a moment Fenna shook it. “We’re going to end this thing deep in the Travelers’ debt, but I see no alternative. It’s a bad business.”

  “It seems so,” Elizabeth said.

  “But now you’re welcome to a bite to eat,” Fenna said.

  “That would be great.” Elizabeth walked with her through several corridors and out into the largest cavern she’d yet seen. At the other end of it was a vast ring of dark metal with a pedestal before it. Elizabeth frowned, a shiver running through her. “The Ring,” she said. “It’s different.” There was an inner circle of symbols on a band rather than lights.

  “Aye,” Fenna said. “It’s different from most I’ve seen. But it works just the same.”

  “How did it get here?” She had the feeling that there was something wrong about that, something important.

  “How did any Ring get anywhere?” Fenna asked. “We found it here when we first came here. These caverns were already hollowed out, but I guess the ore wasn’t good enough to be worth the effort, or maybe troubles came and everyone went home. It was all shut down tidily. No bones, no signs of a fight, just abandoned. I reckon somebody pulled out long ago.”

  “I suppose,” Elizabeth said. She frowned. There was something about the gate that was wrong, something she should remember. When had she seen one like it before?

  Two figures were silhouetted for a moment against the brightness of the Stargate as they walked through, one with a cap of golden hair, the other tall and muscular. They stepped through, and for a moment the puddle of blue light remained before it faded. The circle of red lit symbols around the gate went dark.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing,” she said.

  The man beside her at the window shoved his h
ands in his pants pockets. “It’s our best shot,” he said. “If anybody can do it, Sam and Teal’c can.”

  “Frankly, I’m less worried about them than us.” Elizabeth turned away from the gate room window, pacing around the conference room table. “That modified ship is the most advanced piece of technology Earth has.”

  The man pushed his glasses up on his nose with one hand. “Think about it this way. That ship exists because of what’s in Jack’s head. Right now, nobody can access that, including Jack. But if the Asgard can help him, then maybe we can find out how he modified the ship. And everything else he knows but can’t tell us.”

  Elizabeth stopped at the far end of the table. “You have a point,” she said.

  “I often do.” He gave her a boyish smile. “You know, it’s not necessary to have an adversarial relationship.”

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Dr. Jackson, I had nothing to do with the President relieving General Hammond. I didn’t even know the Stargate program existed! This job was not my idea. But I’m going to see it through, and I’m going to make the best decisions I possibly can.”

  He perched on the other end of the table, the tension in his body belying his carefully diffident demeanor. “Look, it’s not to your advantage or to ours for this to be adversarial. But I can’t help wondering exactly who does benefit. Progressive activist given command of an Air Force project, disarmament negotiator given control of Earth’s most advanced weapons, DC insider relieving beloved commander

  —

  somebody’s set up for failure here and I’m not sure if it’s you or us.”

  It was time to trust him, time to take that leap of faith that’s always the most deadly in politics. “I know exactly who,” Elizabeth said. “And it’s both of us set up to fail. This is supposed to discredit both the Stargate program and me. Unless I’m simply a convenient pawn as far as he’s concerned.”

  “Kinsey,” Jackson said.

  “Got it in one.”

  “Color me surprised.” Jackson smiled again. “Then you know there’s one way for both of us to win.”

  “For us not to fail,” Elizabeth said. She came around the table again and offered her hand. “How about it?”

  “It’s a deal,” Jackson said.

  SGA-22 Unascended

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  John bent over Teyla’s shoulder at the communications board in the gateroom, shifting from one foot to the other uncomfortably as he looked at the incoming video transmission through the Stargate. “Oh, hi, Larrin,” he said.

  The woman looked amused. “Hello Sheppard.”

  “Long time, no see,” John said. “Everything OK on your end?”

  “Yes.” Her smile widened. “The only reason I’m calling is because your friend Mr. Woolsey asked for anyone to let him know if there were any reports of a woman with no memory.”

  John straightened up as Teyla felt her breath catch in her throat. “A woman with no memory?”

  “A couple of our ships were trading recently on a world called Mazatla. One of them just rendezvoused with me and they said that the Mazatla had a woman that they were asking around about. They’d found her wandering around a field and she had no memory. They were asking if anyone knew her.”

  “What did she look like?” Teyla put in, forestalling John’s question.

  Larrin shrugged. “Dark haired, pale skinned, average height. Nothing remarkable.”

  “Mazatla,” John said. “Where is that?”

  “I’ll send you the gate coordinates. It’s an underpopulated world with subsistence farming and hunter/gatherers. We trade for food there.” She leaned forward to transmit the gate address. “It only has an orbital Stargate.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” John said. “I appreciate it, Larrin. I’ll buy you a drink next time.”

  “You wish,” Larrin said, and cut the transmission.

  Teyla looked up at John, one eyebrow rising. “Buy you a drink?”

  “Just being friendly,” he said. “Friends. As in people who tell you important things you want to know.”

  “Do you think it is Elizabeth?” Teyla asked.

  “I think we need to go find out.” John headed briskly to the office, where his jacket lay over the chair.

  “You mean we should go find out,” Teyla said, following him. “Mr. Woolsey left you in charge in Atlantis.”

  “It’s just a quick fact-finding mission,” John said. “Asking friendly people a few questions. Tell Ronon to get up here. We’re checking out a jumper.” He stopped, that quirky smile at the corner of his mouth, and she knew he’d just been looking for a reason. “It’ll take an hour, tops.”

  “If you say so,” Teyla said.

  The gate was indeed orbital, high above a planet roughly half water and half land, the land lush with green forests and plains. Massive river systems snaked through low lying areas, and white clouds swirled above.

  “I’m taking us down at the coordinates Larrin gave us,” John said. “Let’s see what they can tell us. Teyla…”

  “I know,” Teyla said. “I will do the talking.”

  “You always do,” Ronon said from behind her, but there was no heat in it. He was back to his teasing little brother tones, a good sign.

  “That’s because she’s good at it,” John said.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Ronon asked.

  “Look out for trouble.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if you discreetly circulate and see if you can find Elizabeth,” Teyla suggested.

  “That’s a thought,” John said. “You negotiate. We’ll just have a nice, casual look around.”

  Through the front windscreen Teyla could see golden plains unfolding, grasslands with grazing herds which startled at the jumper’s passage. They slowed, a settlement of tents emerging, two characteristic bare spots in the grass where Travelers’ ships had landed. At that altitude it was possible to see people, many of them clustered around stalls and cook fires. They looked upward at the jumper curiously, but since it looked nothing like a Wraith ship there was no panic. After all, they traded with the Travelers.

  “I’m going to set down there where the Travelers did,” John said, bringing the puddle-jumper around in a wide bank.

  “They will be less alarmed that way,” Teyla said. “Let us keep this as normal as possible. We are Lanteans who also hope to trade.”

  “That’s a plan,” John said.

  Teyla was pleased by the greeting they received. Though Mazatla had only an orbital gate, clearly the inhabitants had extensive trade with the Travelers, and were not, as so many populations of isolated worlds were, suspicious or frightened of strangers. Indeed, her explanation that they had been told of good trading by the Travelers was accepted with little discussion. That they were Lantean was a matter of some note, but their ship was not so different from those of the Travelers, except that it was smaller.

  “Can’t carry much in that,” one of the headmen said skeptically.

  “It passes through the orbital Ring,” Teyla explained. “And as we live on a very cold world, we are eager to trade for fresh food.”

  John shifted behind her, his P90 slung across his chest. It was, after all, a very plausible reason for their presence, and an arrangement they had with various allies across the galaxy.

  Consequently she was shown samples of various vegetables, which Teyla spent a great deal of time examining at length, and then spent another hour at least bartering the contents of the jumper’s first aid kit for six bushels of grain and two of kammar.

  John turned one of the green, spiky kammar around in his hand. “Like some kind of prickly pear,” he said.

  “They are very tasty,” Teyla said. “And I believe they taste more like your artichokes.”

  “OK.” John picked up one of the bushels and carried it toward the jumper. “We could have some artichokes.”

  The negotiation had reached the point where their hosts were breaking out the drinks and ins
isting they stay as spectators for some kind of game, which meant it was time for her question. “Oh, by the way,” Teyla began, as though it had just occurred to her. “Our friends said there was a woman here who had lost her memory? We have a friend we are looking for.”

  “The Forgetting Woman!” the headman said. “She was here. She came with the group from Pina. They’ve already gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Back to their homes, I think.” He shrugged. “The Gathering is nearly over.”

  “And if we wanted to see if she is our friend, where would we go?” Teyla asked.

  A younger man leaned in. “The Forgetting Woman didn’t go with them. She went with the Travelers. She went on Lesko’s ship.”

  “Not Larrin’s?”

  “I don’t know Larrin,” the headman said. “Lesko was the one who was here. She went with Lesko’s people.”

  “Where did they go?” Teyla asked.

  The younger man shrugged. “Who knows? The Travelers go where they want. I think they said she was going to find her home.”

  Teyla suppressed a sigh of frustration. “Do you know anything else about her? Did she say anything? Did she give a name?”

  The younger man nodded. “She said she was from a city. And that her name was Elizabeth.”

  SGA-22 Unascended

  INTERLUDE

  Elizabeth was changing the dressing on one of the wounded men when Dekaas returned to the aid station. She looked up at him and he shook his head.

  “She didn’t make it,” he said quietly. “Intracranial bleeding.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment. No matter how many dead, no matter if she’d known them or not, it was never easy, never possible to simply dismiss.

  There was a sudden rumble, and the inner wheel of the Ring began to turn. Someone screamed, and there were voices shouting out orders, the sounds of people running.