Teal’c clenched his jaw. It was one thing for him to endure such interrogation, but the thought of his friend suffering the same was almost intolerable. Still, though, he could not break. He would not give the names of Jefferson and his men, and he knew that Daniel Jackson would tell him the same.
Yuma waited for a moment and then, with a brief nod, said “Very well,” and had the guard open the door. “We’ll have someone come and tend to your wounds,” she said, sounding almost magnanimous. “We aren’t savages after all.”
A short time after they’d left Teal’c alone, the door opened once more and a young woman in the uniform of the security forces entered. She knelt by Teal’c’s bunk and opened the case she carried. Inside were bandages and other medical supplies. She lifted his shirt and began to clean and dress the wound with skilled efficiency.
Teal’c closed his eyes and let her work, his thoughts going to Daniel Jackson. He knew that he would withstand a beating—his friend was stronger than he appeared—but Teal’c just wished there was something he could do about it.
“Okay, we don’t have much time, so listen carefully.”
Opening his eyes, Teal’c looked down at the woman whose eyes were still focused on her task. He wondered if he’d heard correctly or if loss of blood was affecting his mental state. “I am listening,” he said.
“They monitor this room with video, but there’s no audio so they can’t hear us,” she continued. “If I take too long, though, they’ll get suspicious. Don’t react—just listen to what I have to say.”
Teal’c closed his eyes once more and let his head rest against the wall.
“We’ll come tonight,” she said, applying what felt like a bandage to the wound. Teal’c tried not to react to the pain. “The guard changes at 1800 hours and we’ll have one of our people in place. We’ll get you out.”
A knot of suspicion formed in Teal’c’s gut; how did he know that this woman wasn’t a plant by Yuma to get him to share the intel she needed? He glanced at the woman out of the side of his eye. “You don’t trust me,” she said with a smile, not meeting his glance. “That’s good. But know that you can.” She turned slightly so that her back was fully to the small, black eye fixed to the far corner and pulled aside the collar of her shirt. There, etched in the skin just beneath her collar bone, was a symbol that had come to mean much to Teal’c these past three years—the glyph for Earth. “My name is Hanna,” she said. “I think you know some of my friends from Laketown.”
So apparently the divide they’d witnessed between military and civilian on Arbella wasn’t so clear cut as they had believed. And apparently they had more allies than either he or Yuma had supposed. Nevertheless, it made no difference if he had an entire platoon sent to rescue him; there was only one way he was leaving this base. “I will not go without Daniel Jackson.”
She gave a terse nod and continued dressing his wound. “Of course. We’re making arrangements to free him too.”
“And Lana Jones?”
Hanna’s hands paused in taping the bandage to his side. “What are you talking about?”
“We brought her from Earth. I had assumed that she was being taken to her husband, but I am uncertain now if that is the case. I believe she may also be held somewhere on the base.”
Hanna frowned. “This complicates matters.”
“Lana Jones is in need of medical care. I cannot allow her to be used as a pawn in Yuma’s plans.”
For the first time, Hanna looked at him directly. “She won’t be the first. But this is certainly the first time she’s played with such high stakes.” She stood and began packing away the empty packets and surplus bandages. “Don’t worry, Teal’c. We’ll need Lana Jones too. 1800 hours. Be ready.”
And with a bang on the door, she was gone, leaving Teal’c with nothing to do but wait.
Atlantis — 2098
The shield disintegrated, a falling away of its bright haze, and Sting was moving.
O’Neill kept pace, shadowing him with the practiced ease of a blade with years of service. Wherever O’Neill came from, he had honed his skills in battle. It was something Sting could respect.
Gesturing to his left, O’Neill moved right so that they came in through either side of the doorway. There was no time for subtlety.
As soon as they crossed the shield’s threshold, Sting felt it—a disturbing presence in his mind, corrupted and wrong. The whole of the city stank of it, but here, in this place of monstrous creation, the sensation clawed at his skull.
It was the hybrids. Their twisted minds cried out to him from where they writhed in what looked like adapted hibernation pods. There were times, Sting knew, when an injured Wraith would restore itself to health through a period of protracted hibernation. It was possible that these things required such measures to adapt to the presence of the parasite within. The thought disgusted him and he turned away from the sight in horror.
“What are you doing here?” The sharp question came from a subtle mind of ambitious talent. Sting knew it well.
Slowly, he turned. “Adroit,” he said to the cleverman who stood, hands poised on his instruments, at one of the laboratory benches. Once, Sting had called Adroit friend—long ago, when he and Boneshard had both served Brightstar. “It sickens me to find you here.”
“Sickens you?” Adroit peeled back his lips in disdain. “You always did lack imagination.”
“Hey,” O’Neill’s voice snapped in his ear. “If you’re done with the staring contest, can we focus here?”
Behind them, the force shield snapped back into place. Its static hum almost danced across his skin. They were trapped.
Inside the room, all was tension—a held breath before the first blow. Six Wraith watched him, clevermen all. No blades among them. Adroit, he sensed, was their leader.
Pulling the explosive from his pocket, Sting slid his thumb to arm it and held it aloft. “The abominations you create here must be destroyed,” he said out loud. “You face a choice, clevermen of Shadow.” He jerked his head behind him, toward the force shield. “Open the shield, retreat with us and live, or refuse and burn with the monsters you have created.”
At his side, O’Neill shifted his stance. He held his stolen stunner in both hands, steady, and although O’Neill’s mind was closed to Sting he could feel tension radiate from him like heat.
From the clevermen, he felt fear, anger, and confusion. They did not know who he was or how he dared challenge the will of their queen.
“I am Sting,” he said. “I am consort to Queen Earthborn, who would have your allegiance and take you from this toxic world. She would take you home and restore the pride of the Wraith—a race who hunt and cull. We were not created to be farmers of men.” He flung a hand toward the hibernation pods. “And we were not created for that.”
He could sense O’Neill’s gaze on him, but the man kept silent. In Sting’s hand, the explosive pulsed as the timer counted down. “Who will join me?”
No answer came. And then Adroit stepped forward. “Queen Earthborn? Queen of a dying hive, with no more than fools and old men to serve her.” His gaze switched to O’Neill. “And what is this? You consort with kine now?”
“I will be happy to watch you die,” Sting snarled. “Traitor.”
“I fear,” Adroit said, mind-to-mind, “that our fates will be reversed.” Then he made a swift gesture and one of the clevermen on the other side of the room moved toward the hibernation pods.
“Hey!” O’Neill snapped. “Stay where you are.”
The cleverman—his mind a shimmer of disdain—ignored him and reached for the pod.
O’Neill fired, his blast catching the Wraith’s shoulder.
But O’Neill was too late; Scorn had already begun the deactivation process. He slumped to one knee, clutching his shoulder, teeth bared. “Now you will understand,” he hissed.
Behind him, the fluid drained from the hibernation pod as the Wraith—the abomination—inside began to stir to wakef
ulness.
Sting felt its mind stir too, thick with an alien presence; it was a cold and foreign hatred that had nothing to do with the purity of Wraith hunger. It spoke of violence for the sake of domination, conquest for the sake of terror. He recoiled from the sensation, even as he recognized it.
Sting bared his teeth as the pod opened and the hybrid opened eyes that flared gold.
“Ah, crap,” O’Neill said. “It’s Bonehead.”
Boneshard, Sting had known; both he and Adroit had served with him in Brightstar’s zenana. But he refused to see this creature as the Wraith he had once claimed as kin.
“O’Neill,” Boneshard said, though he spoke in the resonant voice of Sobek, the parasite within.
“Here we are again.” O’Neill levelled his weapon, though Sting doubted it would be effective against this creature. He suspected that O’Neill knew the same. “How’s the hand?” O’Neill said.
Boneshard flexed his feeding hand, injured in their previous confrontation. Of course, it was healed. On his other hand, he wore a jeweled device of the parasites. “And where is the rest of the great SG-1?” said Sobek. “Do you fight alone?”
“Oh, they’re off kicking ass elsewhere.”
Boneshard’s eyes shifted from O’Neill, skated over Sting, and landed on Adroit. “You do not kneel before your god?”
Sting felt Adroit’s flare of indignation, masked quickly by fear-stench as he hurried to bow low. “Sobek,” he said. “This Wraith has come to destroy us. He carries an armed grenade.”
The hybrid’s gaze swung toward Sting. Then he bared his teeth and Sting felt Boneshard’s mind slam into his. “I will take you apart bone by bone,” he hissed. “I will consume you, Sting of Earthborn’s hive. And then I will consume your girl-queen.”
Sting adjusted his hold on the grenade, the pressure in his mind vast. He remembered, now, how easily he’d fallen to Boneshard in the facility on Earth. But he would not do so again; all he need do was detonate the grenade. And he could do it now, he could bypass the timer.
Tearing his gaze from the monstrosity before him, he looked over at O’Neill.
He gave a subtle shake of his head. “Give them time.”
Boneshard—or perhaps it was the parasite, Sobek—stalked closer and Sting watched in disgust as the other Wraith abased themselves before him. “My first brothers,” he said, gesturing to the other hibernation pods, “await my orders. Do you see them?”
Sting tightened his grip on the grenade and stepped back. “I see them,” he said. “And I will destroy them. All of them. They bring shame on us all.”
Boneshard’s eyes flashed and once more it was Sobek who spoke. “Your species,” he said, rolling his shoulders in a languid way in which no Wraith would move, “have such literal minds. You are strong, yes, but lack a human imagination.” His gaze turned to O’Neill. “I miss that.”
“Right now, I’m imagining you dead,” O’Neill said. “How does that work for you?”
Sobek peeled back his lips in something like a human smile. “I will not need to imagine your death, O’Neill.”
“No?”
From his position, kneeling, Adroit said, “This one, my Lord, has always been so. He thinks like a toothless blade, unable and unwilling to change.”
“Unwilling to bow before another!” Sting spat. “I bow only to my queen.”
“We shall see about that,” Sobek said and lifted the hand bearing the parasite’s device. It glowed, sending a liquid heat scorching through the air between them and drilling into Sting’s skull.
“Sonofabitch!” O’Neill cursed and opened fire.
Dimly, through the pain, Sting saw the bolt hit Boneshard. It had no effect.
“You will kneel!” Sobek hissed. “You will kneel before your god!”
Sting hissed air through his teeth. The pain was enormous, a breathing, beating thing. He’d felt nothing like it before. It was as if his brain burned. And yet, through it, he saw Earthborn’s face and felt the cool weight of the stunner in his hand, and knew that he could not let go. He could not succumb to this.
“I said let him go!” O’Neill’s words were misty through the pain, as ineffectual as the power of his stolen weapon.
“You are stubborn,” Sobek said, drawing closer. He lifted his hand, the jewel at the center of the device glowing deeper and the pain surged forward.
Helpless, he cried out. The sound was a wordless scream; he was glad Earthborn was not there to witness it.
“Sting!”
That was O’Neill. Sting was aware of him in the periphery of his vision. And, even through the pain, he knew what he was asking. The explosive… If he lost consciousness, he’d lose the explosive. It would all be for nothing.
Stiff, on uncooperative legs, he eased himself down, one knee at a time. He could feel sweat on his skin, bile in his throat. Hunger pulsed through the pain. He was weakened, but worse than all of that was the shame of kneeling before this abomination.
Sobek smiled, a baring of Wraith teeth, and his feeding hand gaped in pleasure. “Good,” he said. “Good. You know your place, Sting.”
The pain stopped and he slumped forward, barely keeping himself upright amid the wave of humiliated relief.
“Aptly named,” Boneshard said, taking control from the parasite. “You always were little more than a pinprick of irritation.”
Sting’s hair fell lank over his face, but he made himself lift his head. “I will kill you,” he said.
“Why do you resist?” Boneshard looked down at the grenade in Sting’s hand. “Do you not see the glory around you?”
“I see nothing but corruption.”
He growled his disgust. “Then you are blind. And you will die for it.” He lifted the device again.
But before he could ignite it, Sting said, “O’Neill!”
He threw the explosive and O’Neill caught it, backing up against the bank of hibernation pods. “Okay, Bonehead, you ready to die?”
Boneshard hissed and suddenly it was Sobek talking. His hand lowered as he turned to O’Neill. “Your plan has failed, Colonel O’Neill of SG-1. You cannot escape.”
“Who said anything about escaping?”
And, despite the way his mind was churning, Sting could hear a chill in O’Neill’s voice that he did not recognize. He glanced over and saw the same bleakness in the man’s eyes. They were the eyes of a warrior prepared for death.
Perhaps Sobek saw it too, because he stopped. “You would not…”
“The hell I wouldn’t,” O’Neill said.
Woozy, Sting pushed himself to his feet. He knew that Sobek saw something in O’Neill that he had not seen in Sting; a readiness to die that, for all his protestations, Sting had lacked.
Because of Earthborn…
He knew it was true and was afraid of what it meant. How could he serve her if he could not bear to be parted from her in death?
Sobek lifted his hand and Adroit rose to his feet. Though Sting was not privy to their conversation, he sensed the dark pleasure in Adroit’s clever mind. They were preparing to attack.
There was a chance that O’Neill could detonate the explosive in time—there was a chance the timer would run down anyway—but O’Neill was unfamiliar with the device and there were too many Wraith.
With a roar, Sting launched himself at Boneshard’s turned back, knocking them both to the floor. His limbs were uncoordinated, the effect of the alien device on his mind still debilitating, but the distraction was enough.
Stunner fire blazed overhead and O’Neill yelled “See you all in hell!”
Chapter 9
Atlantis — 2098
“Sir, wait!”
Carter’s yell came out of nowhere, accompanied by a burst of gunfire. Jack’s finger jerked away from the grenade’s detonator because, behind him, the sickly green of the Wraith force shield had dissolved.
He spared Carter a single glance. She was alone; O’Kane wasn’t with her.
Sting wa
s still wrestling Boneshard, the timer on the grenade could run down at any moment, and they still needed a hybrid.
There wasn’t time for anything but a Hail Mary pass.
“Carter,” he barked, pitching the grenade as far as he could across the lab. “Cover me!”
Jack turned his stunner on Boneshard and opened fire. Carter opened up on the Wraith science-geeks, keeping them pinned down and unable to retrieve the grenade. None of them tried to fight back. Perhaps they weren’t armed? It was a small mercy, but he’d take it.
The hybrid bucked under the impact of the stunner fire, so did Sting; some of the charge was transferring between them. It didn’t matter. Jack fired again, and again. He had no idea how much was needed to take the bastard down.
And, by now, reinforcements had to be on the way. There was no time for subtlety.
He fired again, the hybrid arched its back and Sting, by some feat of desperation, heaved the thing over and onto its back. Jack was on him in an instant, jamming his foot against the arm that wore the Goa’uld hand-device and firing again, at close range, into the thing’s head.
It jerked. Sharp teeth bared, then its mouth went slack. Blood, black blood, trickled between its lips. Maybe the thing had bitten its tongue. If it had a tongue.
Breathing hard, Sting sat back on his heels. He looked like crap, but there was no time to stop.
“Move it!” Jack growled, ducking down to grab the hybrid under its arms. The thing was heavy.
Growling something unintelligible, Sting pushed to his feet and seized the hybrid’s other arm. Together they started dragging it out of the lab, keeping low to avoid Carter’s covering fire.
“Where’s O’Kane?” Jack shouted as they retreated into the corridor outside the lab. Jack ducked right, taking Sting and the hybrid with him.
“On his way,” Carter said, pulling back around the corner. “Sir, how long—?”
She never finished the question.
The detonation seemed to suck all the air out of Jack’s lungs, all the sound out of his head. There was a weightless moment of nothing, of screwed shut eyes and bracing for impact, and then it all rushed back in: shoulder crunching against the wall, the floor racing up to meet him. Something heavy punching into his face.
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