“The what?” O’Neill asked, legitimately confused.
Glancing around the clearing, Carter saw no sign of it. “Dammit, I must’ve dropped it on the other side! I was hoping to go back, but without the TWM-1…”
“Might it still be on the other side?”
“With those quakes? There’s no guarantee it’ll still be there, and besides, it’s been years now.”
His hands at his temples as if to stave off a headache, O’Neill asked, “Will someone please tell me what the hell’s going on? Teal’c, why do you have a soul-patch?”
“As Major Carter said, O’Neill, it is a long story.”
“Well, we’ve got plenty of time,” O’Neill snapped. “I’d kinda like to hear it.”
“Yeah, we have plenty of time.” Carter glanced back at the mountain with a heavy heart.
For each of the next six days, SG-1 continued to dial Earth, only to have the wormhole fail to engage. In the interim they also used some rocks on the plateau to create a makeshift staircase so they could approach the Stargate without clambering up the bottom of the circle.
By the fifth day, Carter was fully convinced that the SGC hadn’t read her instructions on the computer, or didn’t look for them until it was too late.
Over that time, Carter noted that the topography of the ground around them changed subtly.
And then, six days after Carter and Teal’c returned, there was a glow around the perimeter of the plateau. Suddenly, two women were standing on the other side of the force shield.
“We did it!” one woman cried.
“They’re still here,” the other said.
“You’ve been here for a week?” the first woman said. “We thought the ring was a portal to another world. Shouldn’t you have left by now?”
“Uhm,” O’Neill said.
“I don’t know, sir,” Carter said, genuinely confused. It should have been the better part of a century since they were in the city.
“You two must be Samcarter and Talc?” the second woman said. “Wow, I really thought you’d be taller.”
Carter frowned. “Who are you?”
“I’m Ellasan, and this is Freygar. We’re scientists, and I have to say it’s a great honor to meet you, Samcarter. When we found the records of your work in the ruins of the old city, specifically of the TWM-1, it was the breakthrough we were looking for. We finally were able to work out a way to stabilize the planet.”
“Stabilize — You mean the whole planet is on the same time stream now?”
Ellasan nodded. “Yes! Oh, I’m so glad you’re still here. We have to go back and report our findings, but we’d love to stay in touch with you now that we can reach the ring.”
Freygar started moving back to the mountain. “We will be back soon. Please don’t go anywhere.”
O’Neill stared down at Carter. “You look sad, Carter. You do realize that those two women just saved their planet from likely destruction thanks in part from your notes, right?”
“I guess, it’s just…” She trailed off.
Teal’c came to her rescue. “Ellasan mentioned the ruins of the old city. That can only mean that the city in which we resided has been destroyed.”
Carter added, “Which means that Nardah and Xirale are dead. And the city was probably destroyed right after we came back through here because the council turned the machine off.” She shook her head. “Such a waste.”
O’Neill put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s been, what, a hundred years or so since you left? Good chance those two would’ve been dead by now no matter what.”
“I suppose, sir.”
“Look at it this way, thanks to you two, SG-1 has saved two planets in one week.”
“Assuming,” Teal’c said, “that we did succeed in our mission. It is possible that we have been unable to dial Earth because your homeworld has been destroyed.”
“Thanks, Teal’c,” O’Neill said with a sigh. “Nice job helping me with the cheering up.”
Ellasan and Freyga did return, and Carter’s hypothesis was confirmed: the council had shut off the machine, and the resultant earthquakes destroyed the city. The geologic disasters spread to other parts of the world, and they traced it to this mountain. Finding Carter’s research in the ruins led to them understanding the temporal disturbance. They used Carter’s notes on time dilation, on the Stargate’s solar-flare-related time travel capability, and on the quantum mirror that all accompanied the TWM-1 specs to help guide them in the right direction toward bringing the planet back into temporal alignment. It helped that they’d been doing their own experiments with temporal physics, as well.
All this meant that P4X-234 now moved at the same speed through time as the rest of the galaxy.
“We’ll have to send a team back at some point,” Carter said, “and try to find out what it was that slowed time down on the planet in the first place. It’s got to be technological, but we were never able to find the source.”
“Some other time, Carter,” O’Neill said. “Right now, it’s time to futilely dial the gate again.”
Just as he had four times a day every day since arriving at P4X-234, O’Neill dialed the six chevrons that corresponded to Earth and the seventh chevron that was the symbol for P4X-234, the point of origin.
But this time, the wormhole engaged. Carter almost didn’t believe it when she saw it. She fumbled for her GDO to transmit SG-1’s identification code so they would open the iris.
“About time,” O’Neill said. “I could use a shower.”
With feeling, Teal’c said, “Indeed.”
Carter smiled, and the three of them walked up the makeshift rock staircase and through the gate.
As soon as they materialized on the ramp, greeted by General Hammond, Daniel Jackson, and a bunch of airmen, O’Neill said without preamble, “Well, it’s about time!”
STARGATE ATLANTIS:
Consort
by Amy Griswold
Thousands of years before the Atlantis expedition, the Wraith rule victorious over a galaxy abandoned by the few surviving Ancients, but they face a new and deadly threat: attack by the Asuran Replicators. Fighting to save his queen’s hive from destruction, Guide, the Wraith later known to the Atlantis expedition as ‘Todd’, searches for a way to turn the tide of war…
Guide wrestled his dart into a steep turn, arrowing between the hive and the Asuran cruiser through a hailstorm of glowing Asuran drones. As he had hoped, a cluster of the tiny hunting weapons fixed on his dart, streaming after him in his wake and away from the Wraith hive’s fragile hull. The hive had taken heavy damage in the Asuran attack and was dangerously weakened on its starboard side.
Three other darts were following his lead, moving to draw off more of the drones as he rolled his own ship to keep the pursuing weapons a few heartbeats from his dart’s tail. He could feel the other pilots’ satisfaction as the drone weapons veered away from the hive, and feel them begin their own evasive maneuvers. Swift’s dart was hindmost, and he hesitated a moment too long before beginning his turn; in an instant his dart was swarmed by the Asuran weapons, shattering as they burst against its fragile hull.
Guide wrenched his mind away from Swift’s as his agony flared and then moments later ended. Poorly named, he thought, and perhaps also poorly led. They had come out of hyperspace nearly on top of an Asuran battleship, and fled in the direction Guide had advised as best, directly into the waiting ambush of three smaller cruisers. Pinned between them, they had been a sitting target, and all their maneuvering had only opened up one narrow chance to break for open space.
It meant bringing the hive all too close to one of the cruisers, with only the darts to keep the Asuran weapons from battering the hive’s hull apart. The queen was at the controls of the hive herself, bringing it about on the precise cou
rse that might let them escape. The readouts streaming across the inner surface of the dart told him that course was true, but he hardly needed them. He could feel Snow’s mind brushing his, and trusted her cool confidence in the course she had plotted.
And yet it still seemed too easy. Another dart was shattering under drone weapon attack, a ripple of fear spreading through the thinning dart wings. He shut his mind to all of it, watching only the readouts, trying to think.
The drone weapons were familiar horrors, but they weren’t the worst ones the Asurans possessed. The nanites that made up their own bodies had that distinction, able to swarm like tiny parasites through the flesh of men or hive ships, consuming it like so much meat to build more abominations like themselves. They were harrying the hive, trying to cripple it, but they might not need to if they could offer an attractive enough distraction. Like the possibility of escape.
Guide flipped his dart on its axis, diving back toward the hive. He reached out with his mind to collect the nearby pilots at the same time as he spoke the orders that would stream across their own screens and whisper in their ears. He rolled, bringing them over the top of the hive to its damaged starboard side, which Snow was skillfully keeping angled away from the nearest cruiser.
He saw it then, a tiny ripple in his sensor readings, a tiny insect of a shuttle drawing next to the hull. A parasite infested with a deadly disease. If even one Asuran made it aboard, if one nanite penetrated the flesh of the hive and began replicating itself there, they were all corpses walking.
*My queen,* he said, and reached for Snow’s mind, forcing himself to the center of her attention. He could feel her anger, and some part of him flinched from it, but he forced his mind open to hers, showing her what he saw, what the hive’s damaged sensors had not. The Asuran shuttle was drawing closer, its landing gear reaching out like claws for the hull. Far too close.
He felt her understanding, immediate and horrified. *Our hull damage hasn’t begun to regenerate. If you open fire on the shuttle, you’ll breach our own hull.*
*Yes,* he said, and brought the dart around into the only possible line of attack.
For a moment she hesitated, and then he could feel the cold calm of decision, numbing ice for his own raw nerves. *Open fire on the Asuran shuttle.*
He dove on the shuttle, adjusting his angle until the last second, trying to find some line that would make it safe to fire. There was none, and he fired regardless, one burst rather than a spitting rain of energy. The first shot went home, straight into the shuttle’s main propulsion, and his heart leapt as he saw it begin tumbling as he had hoped, away from the hive.
He pursued it, putting his dart between it and the hive’s flesh. The hull was still holding, and every heartbeat brought them further away from its wounded flank. Two more darts were falling in behind him, one properly, one a fraction off its line, its inexperienced pilot wobbling on his course in his terror.
*Correct course,* he snarled at Bloodred, putting all the force he could behind it, but the boy was deaf with his own fear. He should never have put him in a dart, Guide thought, not an untried young blade barely out of the crèche, but they had so few pilots left —
The Asuran shuttle rolled, one thruster coming back online, and even as he fired, shattering its bridge compartment, it fired its own energy weapons in one last dying burst, tearing into Bloodred’s dart. The dart rolled wildly, tumbling end over end, and then drove at speed into the hive ship’s weakened hull.
Vapor streamed from the vented compartments as the hull tore, a long rip widening as the hive strained into its next turn. Within, clevermen and drones would be desperately seeking a way farther into the hive, those who hadn’t died at once of explosive decompression. The hive would stop them, sealing off the damaged compartments. He had seen it before, the marks of men’s claws in the flesh of sealed hatchways, dead men who had fought and failed to save themselves from the hive’s relentless instinct to keep those in undamaged sections alive.
There was no time to think of that now; the Asuran shuttle was tumbling harmlessly at last, its passengers no threat as long as they were frozen by the chill of space, but the drone weapons were still harrying the hive. Snow was bringing them back on course to slip through the gap between the Asuran fields of fire, the hive handling badly now but holding together. Guide signaled the remaining darts to shield the hive.
*Return,* Snow signaled. He protested wordlessly, and felt the force of her mind bending him to her will, not angry, but grimly determined. *We must jump to hyperspace as soon as we are clear. We cannot afford to lose all the darts. Retrieve your men.*
He collected as many as he could, arrowing for the dart bay. Several of the darts bruised the deck in their landing, damaged or piloted by men trembling with fatigue and the consciousness of their losses. He cracked open the canopy and climbed out, steadying himself carefully as he did so; he was trembling too, and couldn’t afford to be seen to stagger.
He felt the jump to hyperspace, a sickening wrench, and counted the darts. Twelve were missing, destroyed or left behind. He counted again, hoping for a better answer, and then snarled as someone pushed past him without apology.
It was Seeker, and Guide bit back his reprimand; for all that the man was a cleverman and not a warrior blade, they were friends of long standing, and did not stand on ceremony. Seeker reached to help two drones extract a wounded pilot from the canopy of his dart. The man’s face was badly burned, his breath irregular.
*Will he live?*
*Probably,* Seeker said, long fingers at the man’s throat to take his pulse. His mouth tightened, and he turned and drove his claws without warning into the chest of one of the drones. It growled a protest, but didn’t fight Seeker as he drained its strength. Seeker turned and tore through the wounded pilot’s shirt with his claws, pressing his feeding hand against his chest. The man gasped, and then began to breathe more steadily, though only the very edges of his burn showed signs of healing.
*Take him to the feeding cells first,* Seeker told the other drone. *Then to the infirmary. I’ll follow.* The drone obeyed, its fellow staggering in its wake.
*With the hull breached, we’re lucky we made the jump to hyperspace,* Guide said.
Seeker shook his head. *We nearly didn’t. Spark says he can’t keep us in hyperspace more than a few minutes.*
*So Spark says.*
*And so I say,* Seeker said, with a flare of temper. *The internal tissues of the hive can’t heal while they’re exposed to vacuum. Hyperspace is even more damaging to them. We must set down at the first opportunity, unless you’d like the hive to die.*
There was another wrenching lurch as they came out of hyperspace. Guide pushed men aside to reach the nearest console, and relaxed a fraction as he saw their location: a system with no inhabitable worlds, but with one rocky satellite that held enough of an atmosphere to make their repairs possible. It was a clever choice on Snow’s part, a place where the Asurans had no reason ever to go.
The repairs were the first priority, he told himself, and didn’t let himself think yet about where the hive would be left after that.
The lights were still dim hours later, and acrid smoke hung in the chill air. Guide found Seeker working to repair a ragged tear in a supporting bulkhead, where the walls strained painfully away from each other, dripping ichor, and gaped too wide to heal without tending. He was up to his elbows in the wound, wrestling its edges together with Bramble’s help.
Two blades were hunched against the corridor wall outside the door of the empty game room, its interior too dark for games, if anyone had the heart for them. They stood with shoulders together, watching in sullen exhaustion as the clevermen worked.
*Help them,* Guide said.
Thunder raised his head, stubborn challenge in his eyes. *It’s no part of our work.* Bonesnap kept his own eyes closed, his head b
ack against the wall.
Guide snarled at them, too tired himself to leash his temper. *What work do you see that you’d be more fit for?*
*We’ve done our part.*
*You’re done when I say you’re done.*
Thunder bared his teeth. *Do you say so?*
*Would you care to argue that?*
Thunder put his hand on his knife, considering it. Seeker raised his head, his hand stilling, although he didn’t turn. Thunder saw that as well as Guide did, and turned his head with a snarl. *We’re done when you say we are,* he said. *But we’re tired. Let us be.*
*You can rest when the hive is mended. Help Seeker.*
*Little you care,* Bonesnap said hoarsely, opening his eyes at last. They burned hot when he turned on Guide. *My brother is dead, but your pet cleverman stayed huddled safe in the depths of the hive like the coward he is.*
Seeker rose, at that, and turned with his hand on his own knife, leaving Bramble wrestling abruptly with walls that threatened to close in on him. *I can hear you, you know,* he said, deceptively mildly. Thunder looked appalled, reaching out to hold Bonesnap back, but Bonesnap shook his hand away. Bramble shrank back against the hive wall as if trying to master Seldom-Seen’s gift of passing unnoticed in a crowd.
They were heartbeats from a fight that would at best draw Snow storming from the zenana to forbid it, and at worst end with more men dead senselessly on the deck.
*Enough,* Guide said, and stepped between them, drawing his own blade in the same motion and pressing it to Bonesnap’s chin. The man froze, his throat working under the point of the knife. *Must we do our enemies’ work for them? Are you that eager to die? I am sure you could have spent your life in battle if you tried. Now your death will buy us nothing.*
Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons Page 18
