“There are Wraith inside,” he murmured. “Several. They are… bored.”
“Well,” Jack said, “why don’t we make their day more interesting?” He leveled a finger at O’Kane. “You stay out here.”
“But I—”
“Uh!” He was brooking no argument on this; O’Kane was an unknown quantity and he didn’t want him getting under his feet in a firefight. “Stay put until we call you.” To Carter he said, “You’re with me. Sting—take point.”
Sting turned a narrow gaze on him and said, “I would rather not have your weapon at my back, O’Neill.”
“Oh for—” He bit off the curse. “You think I’m gonna shoot you in the back now?”
A slow blink, a baring of teeth. “We will move together,” he said, and drew his stunner.
Gritting his teeth against the argument, Jack said, “Fine. On three. One, two—”
Sting hit the door controls and they were out into a large room. A half dozen Wraith lounged at their posts on a mezzanine level at the top of a sweeping staircase. In Jack’s peripheral vision, a Stargate loomed.
Caught unaware, the Wraith were slow to respond when Jack opened fire. His zat didn’t make much of an impact, but Sting’s blaster took out two of the bastards before they could even draw their weapons.
But it wasn’t enough to suppress their fire completely, and a bolt of blue energy hit the floor at Jack’s feet, sending him dancing backward. Sting kept advancing, though, and Jack ducked in behind him, Carter on his heels.
They made it to the foot of the stairs as another Wraith went down at the top, convulsing under Sting’s stunner fire.
“Cover me!” Jack barked, dashing up the stairs and diving full-length onto the floor as Sting’s weapons-fire spat overhead.
Crunching into an inert body, Jack pulled the stunner from its lifeless fingers and opened fire.
Carter was right behind him, sheltering at the top of the stairs as she took out another Wraith just as it reared up from behind a console at the back of the room.
“Sir!” she yelled. “Behind you!”
He spun in time to see two of the faceless Wraith—Sting had called them drones—charging up the stairs from the level below. He took out the closest one and Carter took the second with her MP5—must have been saving the last of her ammo. Jack followed up with a shot from his stolen stunner to finish the job.
Sudden silence rang in his ears, punctuated only by his harsh breathing as he climbed to his feet. Eight Wraith were down, but he, Carter, and Sting were unscathed. Something of a miracle.
Carter was already at one of the consoles on the mezzanine, practically standing on a sprawled Wraith body. “Sir, we need to secure the doors. I think you have to do it.”
“Me? Carter, I can barely work my TV remote.”
“James!” she called. “Get up here.” She gave Jack a worried look. “Reinforcements must be on their way.”
“They are,” Sting confirmed, shifting uneasily. “You must secure this room now.”
O’Kane came barreling up the stairs into the control area, and to his credit he didn’t even look frightened. If anything, he looked fascinated. Kind of like Daniel. “This is incredible,” he said, glancing around with round eyes.
“I know.” But Carter didn’t spare a glance from the console. “How does the colonel take control?”
O’Kane looked at him. “Ah—you just have to tell it to do it, Colonel.”
“What?”
He gestured around. “Lantean technology was designed to interface with the minds of the Ancestors. If your Lantean gene is powerful enough, the city should respond to your commands.”
“Carter?” There had to be a button or something to press.
Eyes wide, she could only shrug. “Sir, there are a dozen Wraith components grafted onto the Ancient technology. Even if I had time to get through it—”
Doors opened from some kind of balcony at the back of the room and two Wraith drones appeared, weapons raised.
“O’Neill!” Sting barked, opening fire on the newcomers. “Take control. Now!”
Ducking a bolt of stunner fire, Jack slammed a hand down onto the console. It was ridiculous, but he’d seen plenty of insanity in the three years he’d been leading SG-1 so what was one more piece of crazy?
Closing his eyes, he tried to concentrate on the city—on this room. On doors closing, shields rising. Locking everything down. Something shivered, just beyond his perception. Almost an echo bouncing back to him. Then something moved and it was darker. He could hear himself breathe, Carter too, sharp and quick. And then Sting, O’Kane. And others—a dozen others—and then everyone until it was all pressing in and he gasped himself upright, eyes flashing open.
Carter was staring at him. “Sir,” she said, somewhere between awed and astonished, “you did it.”
Carefully climbing to his feet, he saw that enormous doors had closed over all the windows and that the room now stood in twilight.
Sting bared his teeth, hissing out a breath. From outside came the dull thud of weapons fire against the blast doors and Jack had a feeling that he’d only succeeded in trapping them here.
For the first time since they arrived, he took a good look around the place. It was cavernous, proportioned like a cathedral, with a grand set of stairs sweeping down to the Stargate. He frowned and took a step closer to the railing of the mezzanine. The gate looked… different. For starters, there was no ramp and the chevrons were all wrong.
“They’re different constellations,” Carter said from behind him. “If we needed further proof that this thing came from another galaxy, that’s it.”
Snatching his cap from his head, Jack scrubbed a hand through his sweaty hair. “Could we dial the Earth gate from here?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know how that would work exactly.”
Which ruled out the gate as an escape route. Peachy. “Sting—any idea how we get out of here in one piece?”
The Wraith bared his teeth. “We fight.”
“I don’t like those odds,” he said, although he wasn’t sure they had an option. Biting down on his anxiety he said, “Carter, O’Kane—figure out where Shadow’s keeping her Frankenstein lab.”
“We’re on it, sir.”
Turning back to the strange Stargate, Jack considered their options. After a moment, he felt a presence at his side and looked over to find Sting standing near him, his attention also fixed on the gate. “Had Earthborn a hive to return to,” he said, “we could step through the Astria Porta and leave this galaxy behind.” He slid Jack a sideways glance. “Then we would not require you to pilot this abomination.”
There was an undertow of melancholy in the Wraith’s voice that tugged at Jack’s guilty conscience. “Homesick, huh?”
“If you mean that I yearn to return, then yes. I am ‘home sick.’”
Daniel would have probably offered reassurance— ‘Don’t worry, you’ll see your home again’ —but Jack couldn’t. Not with Hecate’s scheme weighing on his shoulders. If they saw her plan through to the end, it was pretty unlikely that Sting or any of the Wraith would ever go home; most of them would die right here.
Just like the billions of humans they’ve killed, he reminded himself. They were fighting for the survival of their species after all; there was no room for sentimentality.
“Sir?” Carter said. “I think we’ve found it. But there’s a problem.”
“Color me surprised,” he said as he turned around.
Carter was frowning at the screen, O’Kane next to her, bent over and scribbling something in his notebook. “The lab’s here, in the central tower. But it’s protected by a force shield.”
“Can’t I just…” Jack tapped his head, “use the Force?”
“Not this time, sir. It’s a Wraith shield and access to its controls is protected by an encrypted code.” She made a face. “Shadow obviously takes the security of her hybrids seriously.”
&nb
sp; Sting made a noise in the back of his throat. “It is possible that there are Wraith among Shadow’s hive who feel as I do about the abominations she creates.”
“Right,” Carter said. “So she’s got to protect it from her own kind too.”
Sting lifted his head, straightening his broad shoulders. “This news is good,” he said. “It speaks to the potential for revolt once Earthborn has staked her claim to lead our people. I cannot believe that even half of Shadow’s blades support what she has done here.”
Jack just gave a nod to that, his guilty conscience making it difficult to meet Carter’s eye as he said, “So how do we take out the shield?”
“There is a way,” she said, shifting her feet in the way she did when delivering bad news.
He let out a sigh. “But?”
“But you won’t like it.”
“Try me.”
“The shield is powered by a generator located directly above the lab. If we take that out, the shield will fall. But the snag is, there’s a back-up generator located directly below the lab. It’s designed to kick in if the first one goes off-line. It’s a built in system redundancy that will—”
“How long do we have?” Jack said, getting straight to the point.
Carter blinked as she changed tack. “Uh, thirty seconds, sir.”
“Thirty seconds?”
“Yes sir—and that’s only because the system is routing through Wraith technology rather than Atlantis’s own. It’s less efficient in this environment. Thirty seconds is how long it would take the second generator to register that the shield is down and to power itself up.”
“It’s not long enough.”
She nodded. “No sir. Not if we all go in. But if O’Kane and I took the generator off-line while you and Sting waited at the shield, you could get inside during that thirty-second window.”
“Can we drop the shield from inside to get out?”
“Not without the code.”
Jack chanced a look at Sting. “Any way you can mind-read that from one of your buddies?”
“If their minds were weak, possibly. But it is likely that such an important code is known only to blades or clevermen with superior intellects. I would not be able to take it from them without their permission.”
“Sir,” Carter said, “O’Kane and I can go down and take out the second generator once we’ve finished the first. It’ll take a few minutes to get there, and you’ll have no way out until we take it off-line, but I think it’s our best shot.”
As plans went, being trapped in a lab with a bunch of Goa’uld-Wraith hybrids pretty much sucked. But it was what they had. “How heavily are the generators guarded?”
“I think we can do it, sir.”
And that was no answer at all, but he’d known Carter long enough to trust her judgment. She was brave, but not stupid; if she said she could do it, she could do it. O’Kane on the other hand… “You ever fired a weapon, Jimmy?”
He looked up, blinked back a flash of irritation at the name, and said, “Yes, Colonel. I’ve had some training.” He made a face. “Years ago now.”
“From who? Dix—the Resistance?”
O’Kane’s gaze darted to Sting, whose head had tipped to the side in that listening-carefully gesture of his. Jack got the feeling that Sting didn’t know a great deal about O’Kane, a stupid consequence of treating all the humans around him as glorified cattle.
Standing up a little taller, O’Kane said, “I come from a place called Arbella, Colonel. I was trained to use a weapon before being sent on a mission to find new resources and allies… Unfortunately, the mission failed. We were attacked.” He paused, his throat working as he swallowed. “I’m the only survivor.”
Carter’s eyes went wide. “The mission with President Jones’ wife?”
“How do you—?” O’Kane looked stunned. “Have you been to Arbella?”
“Yeah,” she said, turning to Jack in mute appeal. “We’ve, uh, visited.”
And this was all shades of interesting, but now wasn’t exactly the time to catch-up on Arbellan politics. “Point is,” Jack said, “you know how to handle a weapon.”
Still reeling, O’Kane managed to pull it together enough to nod. “Yes.”
Taking his zat from its holster, Jack handed it over. “One shot stuns, two kills.” O’Kane took the weapon, but Jack didn’t it let go right away. “You watch Carter’s back,” he said. “That’s what you do. Understand?”
“I understand,” O’Kane said and Jack let go of the weapon.
Carter was watching him with an indecipherable expression and Jack met her look and held it without backing down; he wasn’t ashamed of where his priorities lay. Not now, when everything was upside down and there was so little left to lose.
After a beat, Carter’s attention switched to Sting. “First thing we need to do is get to that transporter.”
“The way out will be guarded,” Sting said, confirming Jack’s suspicion. “I sense several Wraith in the corridor beyond the door—four drones and their blade.”
“The drones,” Carter said, “can you control them?”
Sting shook his head. “Not with their blade so close.”
“But can you fool them?” Jack said.
“Fool them?”
He threw Carter a look. “I’m thinking we make like a Wookiee.”
It took her a moment, and then she smiled. “Sting, could you convince them that we’re your prisoners?”
He gave it some thought, and then inclined his head. “Perhaps, although not for long.”
“But long enough for us to get the jump on them?” Jack felt a flare of adrenaline, hot in the center of his chest. He took a breath. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“I am learning that you use the term ‘plan’ lightly,” Sting observed. “I am uncertain whether that is strength or weakness.”
Jack twitched half a smile. “I like to call it ‘desperation.’”
Arbella — 2098
Roz Bailey had never believed in hunches. Her personnel were trained to rely on good judgment and keen observation. In her experience, gut instinct was too often fed by the primal need for a fight and that was what got people hurt. She’d never been a soldier who hungered for battle, but she knew it was often necessary. The Combined Military Force was primarily a peacekeeping corps, but just because the people of Arbella were living in a time of peace didn’t mean that everything was rosy.
The closed door directive meant that the CMF had never seen off-world conflict, and, despite her own stance on the matter, the security of her homeworld had always been her priority. But if it was really was as bad on Earth as Jack O’Neill had said, then surely it was Arbella’s responsibility to take action? Those people left on Earth were still their people. After the meeting with President Jones, however, Roz doubted that any political sway she might have had remained intact. As far as Jones was concerned, SG-1 had betrayed them—and Roz found it hard to argue the point.
The idea that they had lied to her stung, and though she had tried to tell herself that Yuma was fabricating the evidence from the datacenter, looking back, she realized that the clues were likely there all along; she just hadn’t wanted to believe them. She’d thought that she and Jack O’Neill were on the same page and, in truth, she guessed they were. From what she’d read of SG-1 over the years, there was nothing they wouldn’t do to look out for each other.
But Roz Bailey had never been one to accept a situation at face value; there were always other stories and she wanted to hear this one told from the horse’s mouth. There was only one other person close to the matter that she trusted. Locking the door, she retrieved the communication device from its hiding place in the chest of drawers. After a few minutes, Dix’s face appeared in the small globe.
“General Bailey, all is well I hope.”
“That’s what I’d like to ask you, Dix. Questions have been raised about SG-1’s movements while on Arbella and I don’t have the answers to give. Wo
uld you care to enlighten me about what they were really looking for in our datacenter?”
Dix’s eyebrows drew down and she wasn’t sure if it was concern or confusion. “I had no knowledge that they had accessed your datacenter, General. Was this without permission?”
“No, they asked for permission, but lied about their reasons. Apparently they were looking for records of solar flares. What does that tell you?”
Dix looked to the side and she saw he was genuinely puzzled. There was no hidden agenda or double-cross here—he had no more idea what O’Neill and his team had been up to than she. “Solar flares,” he said. “I remember my father telling of such a phenomena. It resulted in—”
“Time travel,” finished Roz. “Yes, the archives that the Founders brought from Earth gave a full account of the gate transporting SG-1 to the past. President Jones suspects that this was their plan all along. To rewrite history—to change the timeline.”
Dix nodded slowly, processing her words. “He believes they wish to erase all that has happened from existence.”
She shrugged, her brain recoiling from the implications.
“And what do you think, General?”
She sighed against the heaviness in her chest. It was a question she had asked herself often, even before this latest news, ever since SG-1 had walked through the gate. To her and to most of Arbella, those four people were ghosts from a strange and painful past. They were the stuff of both legend and infamy, and they had found themselves in a future they must have thought impossible. Could she honestly say, if faced with the same predicament, that she’d have been content not to challenge the hand she’d been dealt? “I think that’s exactly what I would do if I were Jack O’Neill,” she said.
Regardless of their actions or their motives, however, Roz couldn’t deny that she was still dependent on SG-1 succeeding in their mission if she had any hope of getting the president to listen to her. Their absence was more worrying than anything they might have done in the datacenter.
“General,” said Dix. “I would urge you not to make judgments on SG-1.” He took a breath as if considering his words. “I too have found myself these past weeks having to face many old and lingering resentments.”
Stargate SG-1 30 - Insurrection Page 9
