by Crane, J. F.
“No.” Ennis’s hand covered her own where she was holding the dressing against his chest. “She will be Pastor now—let her lead the people. Let her open their eyes to the truth before it is too late.”
“But—”
“Please.” His face was waxen, lips turning blue. Sam Carter had seen death before and recognized its approach. “Rhionna must be my redemption now,” Ennis whispered. “Let her lead them.”
With a nod, Sam withdrew her hand. “Then I have a job to do.”
Ennis closed his eyes, his breath coming in a wet, wheezing rattle now.
Stepping over Sorcha’s prone body, Sam paused to press her fingers to the woman’s neck. Her pulse was steady. With no time to do more, she reached for another dressing and using her good hand and her teeth tied it as best she could around the wound in her own arm. Then, hunkering down before the alien computer, she got to work. Outside the storm was worsening, and the people of the Badlands didn’t have long.
Daniel and Teal’c didn’t have long.
* * *
“It has been many years since our last execution within the Ark. But I have long thought that it was time the practice was reintroduced—the people are becoming sloppy in their devotions, their respect for the Elect is faltering.” Tynan Camus peered down the length of his nose. “I should thank you, Colonel O’Neill, for providing me with the opportunity to restore one of our old customs. The death of the outlander heretic will demonstrate the power of the Elect most effectively.”
Jack didn’t bother to reply; smarter men than Camus had tried to goad him into a hasty response, and he was way too seasoned to fall for anything so amateurish. Instead he spoke to Rhionna, whose white face said more about her fears than any words could express. “Keep that on him,” he said, nodding toward her gun.
“What do you think’s happened?” Her gaze darted to the Sunrise building.
“Nothing. Carter’s on the case. Just give her a few more minutes.” He said it with confidence, partly to quell his own unease. No one was more capable than Carter, no one was more likely to get the job done. Unless…
No point in going there.
A flicker of light caught his eye, and he glanced out through the water-drenched dome. One of the giant screens outside glimmered through the slashing rain. “Watch him,” he told Rhionna and trotted over to the far side of the wall for a closer look.
The rain was blowing in horizontal blades, and it was difficult to make out anything through the sheets of water. But in the cold light of the screen he saw movement—a shifting, swaying mass ducking beneath the onslaught of the storm. The screen flickered again, brightness glancing off sodden hair plastered to thin, terrified faces. Faelan’s people had arrived, and he could almost feel their desperation pressing against the impassive gates of the Ark.
His hope hardened into anger. Two steps propelled him back to Camus, and he dragged the man across the wall and toward the edge of the dome. “Look!” he shouted, shoving him up close. “Look at them.”
Camus’s face remained impassive. “Folly, to bring them here. If it’s the Lord’s will that they perish, perish they shall.”
“The Lord’s will?” Jack yanked him around, jamming his pistol beneath the man’s chin and forcing him back hard against the railing. This close, he could see the contempt in Camus’s eyes. He could smell it. “It’s your will, you arrogant son of a—”
“Jack!”
He turned at Rhionna’s startled shout. Weapon raised, she was aiming it with a steady hand at the half dozen Elect Guard stalking the length of the wall toward her. Knowing what he’d see, Jack looked the other way and saw another group of soldiers, guns readied, closing in on them.
“Did you really believe you could take me captive without anyone noticing?”
Jack kept his Beretta pressed beneath Camus’s chin, forcing his head up. “Don’t think I won’t enjoy shutting that smart mouth of yours.” The barrel of the gun rose a little, fell again, as Camus swallowed hard. “Back off!” Jack hollered at the guards. “Back off now!”
“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Rhionna called—a point on which Jack didn’t exactly agree, but he let it slide. “We just want to show you the truth! We want you to know what the Elect are doing in your name!”
“This woman is depraved!” Camus screamed, glaring at Jack and daring him to do his worst. “The Lord has damned her and all the visitors from Acarsaid Dorch! They must be set Outside to face His wrath!”
Sonofabitch was calling his bluff.
“Please,” Rhionna shouted as the Guardsmen glanced at each other and took a hesitant step forward. One man broke from their ranks, and Jack recognized the soldier who had let them go on the night they’d left the city. “Captain Tanner,” said Rhionna, the zat in her hand shaking. “I don’t want to hurt you. Please, you must listen. There are people outside. If we don’t open the Ark and let them in—”
The captain shook his head, approaching her slowly. “Rhionna, this is unwise –”
“You hear her madness!” Tynan crowed. “Open the Ark? She is crazed!”
“Enough from you!” shouted Tanner, shocking Tynan into silence.
“There’s still time, Tanner!” pleaded Rhionna.
As she spoke lightning flashed overhead, thunder cracked, and all at once the screens went black. From the plaza below rose a fearful gasp, a chatter of uncertainty. Jack turned his head a fraction to see what was happening and felt a sharp crack across his jaw; Tynan Camus was stronger than he looked. Reeling from the blow, Jack staggered back, whirling to keep his weapon trained on the Guardsmen. But without Camus, he was out of cards to play. There were twelve of them and one of him; they could shoot him where he stood. He worked his jaw. “Crap.”
“Disarm them,” Tynan ordered, retreating behind the line of soldiers. “And secure them in the cells. I shall speak with the Elect about their execution.”
“Please, look out there!” Rhionna said, her voice was ragged with grief. Jack could feel it too, jagged in his chest. “There are children and women.”
Tanner actually risked a glances, but the storm was so violent that the man couldn’t possibly see anything.
“For crying out loud,” Jack shouted. “She’s telling the truth. There are people out there who—”
His words were drowned out by the Sunrise theme, blaring triumphant from the screens as they booted up again. Rhionna visibly sagged, her gun drooping to point uselessly at the floor. “No,” she breathed, staring up at their failure. “He’ll die out there…”
Jack knew whom she meant, but said nothing. Daniel and Teal’c were out there too.
He raised his weapon, looking for a shot. Camus was hiding behind the soldiers, but Jack was an expert marksman, and if he could just—
A loud hiss of static burst from the screen. The image juddered, pixilated, then froze. A moment later it was gone, replaced by something entirely different. “My name is Faelan Garret,” said a familiar voice. “These are my people and this is how we live.”
On the screen, the image painted broad across Sunrise plaza, was Daniel’s raw footage of the Badlands. The shanty town, the blinded children, the poverty and want.
“We are at your gates now,” Faelan’s voice continued, buffeted by the wind outside but still audible through the microphone. “The storm is upon us, and if you don’t let us in, we’ll die out here while you live in peace and plenty.”
The scene changed, showed a thin, sun-browned boy with a wide smile, showed Daniel’s hand offering the kid chocolate. Jack felt his throat tighten and wondered where the boy was now, if he’d made it out of the Badlands. If he was standing, terrified, before the gates. Then he saw Teal’c carrying a scrap of a child in his arms with the rain lashing across them both.
“Help us,” Faelan said, assured and calm. The voice of a leader, not the voice of a beggar. “Open the gates to your brothers and sisters. We too are Iernans, and we have been Outside too long.”
Jack heard a sound at his side. Rhionna was swiping the back of her hand across her cheek. Then her chin lifted and she stepped forward. “Listen to him!” she called, but not to the soldiers this time. She spoke to the dazed people of the Ark, who stared in disbelief at the images on the screen before them while the film began to repeat. “He speaks the truth!”
A few of them turned, looking for the source of the voice. Then arms pointed, people caught between the screen and Rhionna. Jack gave her a gentle nudge. “You got their attention,” he said. “Better make use of it.”
With a nod, she climbed up onto the parapet and balanced there. Neither Tanner nor his soldiers made any move to stop her. “You know who I am,” she shouted. “My father is Pastor here, as was my grandfather and his father too! Trust my words if you cannot trust Faelan Garret! The Elect have lied to us, they have fed us sweetmeats and entertainments and kept us in ignorance of the world beyond the Ark! But there is a way to save Ierna, to soothe the burn of the Sun so that our planet can heal and provide for all her people, as she did in the Time Before! But if we do not open our gates and our hearts to those Outside, then our last chance to save our home will be lost!”
“Heresy!” Camus shouted, shoving past the Guards toward Rhionna. “I’ll see you Burn for your lies!”
She ignored him. “Open the gates!” she shouted. “Men of the Elect Guard, open the gates! In the name of mercy, open the gates!”
With a curse, Camus snatched a weapon from one of the Guardsmen and aimed it at her.
Helpless, Jack flung himself forward. “Get down!” The bullet whistled past his ear just as he slammed into the parapet.
Rhionna cried out, blood bursting forth from her right leg, her knee buckling.
Then she fell.
* * *
Teal’c placed himself between the child he carried and the wind, though he knew his feeble shelter would not save them if Daniel Jackson’s plan failed.
Up on the screen images of the Badlands danced behind the rain—the Badlands as they had been before the storm. He had seen such poverty and despair on countless worlds, and it always seemed that wealth and privilege existed no more than a step away from the most desperate want.
Thus was every human world he had ever encountered.
The humans’ capacity for greed and selfishness was matched only by their capacity for generosity and altruism; a conundrum of a people, unpredictable as the weather.
Safety lay within the walls of the Ark. But would the people there obey their pity or their fear? Daniel Jackson believed in the goodness of humanity, Teal’c in its capacity for evil.
Thus far, on Ierna, the two were finely balanced.
A scrawny hand clasped his arm. It was the mother of the child he held, and when he looked down he was surprised to see her smiling. Her face was wet, with rain or tears he could not tell, but her eyes were bright. “Now they will know,” she shouted over the storm, her thin fingers biting into his arm. “Now they will know of us and our plight; Faelan Garret has given voice to our woes, and they will hear!”
Teal’c inclined his head, but could not share her confidence. He knew all too well the propensity of humans to misinterpret that which they did not wish to hear. By way of reply, he spoke the only truth he could find. “In Faelan Garret, you have a strong leader.”
The woman nodded, another squall blowing her against him and forcing him to brace against the wind to keep his balance. “Aye, Faelan speaks for us now,” she said. “And now that they know what we suffer, how could they not listen to him?”
Gentling his hand over the child’s wet head, Teal’c turned his head from the storm and did not answer. The wave was nearing the shore, its towering silence more terrifying than the roar of the wind. If the people of the Ark were to listen to Faelan Garret, they must do so now or the people of the Badlands would drown. And he, along with Daniel Jackson, would drown with them.
* * *
Without thought, Jack flung himself out across the parapet and felt his hand connect with fabric and skin. He held tight though his arm was all but wrenched from its socket as Rhionna’s weight tried to drag him over the edge. One arm hooked around a stanchion, he realized that it was only a matter of seconds before he lost his grip or was pulled over with her.
After a white and endless moment of muted panic—a kind of bright space of total clarity—he felt hands on his shoulders. Pulling. Someone was beside him—Tanner, reaching down to Rhionna—and the weight eased. Jack blinked his vision clear and saw her staring at him, ashen- faced, as he and the Guardsman began to haul her back up.
His arm was almost numb by the time they dragged her to safety, her leg bleeding heavily. And it was only when he slumped against the parapet that his ears cleared enough to hear the outraged protests coming from somewhere to his left. Right arm dangling uselessly, he shifted to see Tynan Camus surrounded by an uncertain group of his own soldiers. Meanwhile, from the plaza below, another sound was beginning to rise.
“Open the gate! Open the gate!”
Bracing himself on the railing with his good hand, Jack looked down to see the once passive audience of Sunrise turned away from the screen that still showed Daniel’s footage. They were moving toward the vast gates of the Ark. And they weren’t alone. People were streaming into the plaza from the surrounding buildings, full of anger and dismay, swelling the crowd. All that stood between them and the gates was a meager line of Elect Guard. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Rhionna slouched next to him while Tanner dressed the wound in her leg. She was frightened, but not paralyzed by fear. “Thank you,” she said, looking up.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “It’s not over yet.”
Outside the thunder roared and, beneath it, he sensed the approach of something far more ominous. A vibration, without sound, rippled up through the wall and came to him through the soles of his boots. He had no idea what it was, but he knew sure as hell that it was Bad News.
* * *
It felt like what it was: the destruction of a world. Thunder came from the very ground beneath their feet, the wave so close now, an ever moving tower of black water. Sound came at last, when it hit the shore, a roar that drowned out the screams of the people who pressed against each other, seeking shelter that was not there. Only the raw sting in his throat told Daniel that he was yelling too, a fervent plea that his friends had come through.
Onward came the tsumani.
Faelan’s voice was a muted rumble now as the footage played on, and Daniel could only hope that the people in the Ark had heard, that they had listened, that they had understood.
But the gates did not open.
They had minutes, if that, and terror was a sharp taste on his tongue. Around him, people tried to squeeze further back, away from what was coming, panic rising and as dangerous as the wave that rolled closer, folding on itself and swallowing land; a relentless juggernaut that left them nowhere to turn. In the press of bodies, Daniel struggled for breath, the crush threatening to suffocate him long before the water hit.
Let them listen. Please let them listen. Let the gates open now.
He flung the prayer into the void, and it seemed that someone was indeed listening. Above the roar of the wave came another sound, an ear-splitting groan of corroded metal being forced.
The Ark was opening.
The enormous gates swung inward, slow and ponderous, and the frantic crowd surged toward safety. He went with them, caught in the riptide of panic, but when he glanced back over his shoulder all he could see was a wall of water curling over them.
Their plan had worked, but it had worked too late.
* * *
Sam felt the noise before she heard it. It rose up through the foundations of the building and shook the walls of the tower as she pelted down the stairs two at a time.
She’d seen no one, not from the moment she’d cracked open the studio door. The building was deserted, and the only voice audible was Faelan’s, repeating his plea on ever
y screen she passed. One way or another, she figured, something was happening.
At the bottom of the stairs she gave herself a slow count of five before slipping out onto the street. The noise hit her ears like a wall. A howl of screeching metal and protesting machinery. She hoped to God it was the sound of the gates opening.
Ignoring the fierce throb in her arm, she reached the street corner and stopped again to peer out into the plaza. It was swarming with people, their shouts and cries drowned by the noise that shook the bones of the city. The gates to the Ark were opening. Then, while she still watched, that noise stopped and the abrupt silence was filled with another sound—screams of terror and a terrible thundering roar of a different and much more deadly nature.
The crowd began to surge, back away from the gates, and Sam ducked sideways, sticking close to buildings of the plaza so she could fight her way forward. The gates were open, not fully but enough to admit the stumbling, mud-soaked people from the coast. But it was too late.
Skidding to a halt, Sam bit off a curse. Behind the refugees rose a barrier of water that dwarfed even the Ark’s high walls. And it was going to hit, now, while the gates were still open.
As the people of the Ark stumbled back, fleeing from the tidal wave, Sam pushed and shoved her way toward it. “Daniel?” she shouted into the frenzy of noise. “Teal’c?”
She almost ran into the first clot of refugees, standing terrified and disoriented amid the towers of the Ark, clutching their ragged clothes and ragged children to them. “Move!” she yelled, prodding the first of them into motion. “Get away from the gate, let the others in!”
There were faces she half recognized, but didn’t have time to remember, as she continued to push closer to the wall. The gate opened inward, swinging on ancient hinges, and cracked maybe ten feet wide. Not wide enough to let all the refugees stream in at once, but much too wide to be open when the wave hit.
“Close the gate!” she shouted, though who could hear her over the noise? “Close the gate!”
And then she saw Daniel. Outside. He was pushing people past him to safety even as the tsunami loomed, poised to break above his head. “Daniel!” But her scream was swallowed by the din as the gate began to move again—too late—and the crest of the wave hammered into the dome of the Ark. “Teal’c!”
