Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series

by Melissa Scott

  “So are these trade goods contaminated or not?” Cai demanded. A couple of his men had already pulled the newly arrived supplies into a shed and were now stripped naked under the nearest pump, hosing themselves down.

  “We don’t know,” Jackson said. “This is a precaution. I think it’s a smart precaution, because if this bug is as bad as it sounded, you don’t want it loose here. Even if you don’t use a lot of petroleum-based plastics, it would mean you couldn’t trade with us, or with anyone else who did, and eventually you’re going to want to get to that level of technology —”

  “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to salvage things that we can’t replace,” Bri said, grimly. “I think we have to assume the worst.”

  “We will, I hope, have more information for you from Atlantis,” Teyla interjected. “Both as to whether this material was exposed and how best to deal with the underlying problem.” She hoped that was true: neither Major Lorne nor Dr. Zelenka had sounded anything but harried when they’d reported the problem. Contamination between worlds was not common — the Stargates themselves destroyed many commonly dangerous micro-organisms as people passed between worlds — but it was not unknown. There were terrible stories of diseases carried from one world to another, of gate addresses that had had to be forbidden, the worlds shut off for months or years until the disease burned itself out and left them more empty than the most ferocious Culling. And then there was the nightmare that was Banissar, which had simply vanished, its Stargate no longer functioning. Seventy years later, a Traveler ship had landed, looking to trade, only to find everyone dead. The people of Banissar had removed crystals from their DHD to keep anyone from dialing in — or escaping to carry the plague — and had left written warnings sealed in multiple containers. The Travelers had fled as soon as they had understood what had happened, but even seventy years later the disease was present, and the Traveler ship had broadcast its warning and then driven itself into a sun rather than spread it further. And that was something else she didn’t want to think about, any more than she wanted to think about the empty sky.

  “It probably couldn’t hurt to disinfect anyone who handled the boxes,” Jackson was saying. “I mean, more than just washing them down, though that’s a good start. If you have any sort of medical disinfectant, something for surgery or things like that?”

  Cai looked at Bri, who shrugged. “We found some, yes — it was one of the things I was looking for. But there’s so little. I really don’t want to waste it.”

  “Perhaps cleaning fluid?” Teyla said. “Of course there is plenty to spare on Atlantis, but that does not help you here.”

  “Not so much,” Cai said, with the flicker of a smile.

  “Industrial cleaners aren’t easily come by, either,” Bri said. “What we’ve got is good lye soap.” She looked at the men still under the pump, rubbing soap in their hair. “That kills most things, it’s just hard on the skin.”

  Something moved in the sky beyond the Stargate, a dark fleck against the blue, its motion unlike any bird. Teyla’s breath caught, and the others turned to see.

  “That’s one of the jumpers,” Jackson said, and Teyla’s radio crackled.

  “— Teyla. Come in, Teyla.”

  Teyla touched her earpiece. “I hear you, Colonel Sheppard.”

  “Good news. We stopped the Vanir ship, and Elizabeth and Ronon are both alive. But they’re in stasis pods, and Rodney says he thinks Dr. Jackson has a better chance of opening them safely than he does.”

  Teyla felt her eyebrows rise at that. “Very well.”

  “We’ve also got one injured Vanir on our hands, and no first aid kit. Contact Atlantis and see if they can send someone through to help it.”

  “I will do that,” Teyla said. “But, Colonel, we do not yet know if the gate room has been cleared.”

  “I know. Do what you can. Sheppard out.”

  “They are alive,” she said, to the others, and even Bri cracked a smile.

  “That’s good to hear,” Cai said, and shook his head. “To lose your friend so soon after you’d found her —”

  “She’s a tough one,” Bri agreed. “Smart. I’m sorry she wasn’t one of ours.”

  “Thank you,” Teyla said, and took a deep breath. “If you’ll excuse us, Dr. Jackson and I need to arrange some things before Colonel Sheppard gets here.” She took Jackson’s elbow and walked him away before anyone could protest.

  “So what does Sheppard want us to do?” he asked, when they were more or less out of earshot.

  “Dr. McKay says Elizabeth and Ronon are in Vanir stasis pods, which he is reluctant to open.”

  “That’s got to be a first time.” Jackson waved a hand. “Sorry, go on.”

  “He seems to think you have more experience with such devices,” Teyla said. “Also, one of the Vanir has survived, but is injured, and John would like us to bring a medic from the city.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “No. Not unless they have made much more progress on this eater-of-plastics. But we must ask.”

  It didn’t take long to make contact with Atlantis and relay John’s request, but Teyla could hear the worry behind Lorne’s careful answer.

  “I can send someone through, but we haven’t knocked down the contamination problem. I’m reluctant to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary. You said Dr. Weir and Ronon are all right?”

  “They are in stasis pods, and seem unharmed,” Teyla answered. “Though Dr. McKay has requested Dr. Jackson’s help in opening them.”

  “I think what Dr. McKay probably meant is that I should collect any information you’ve got on Asgard stasis devices,” Jackson interrupted. “I’ve had some — contact — with the devices, but I’m not by any means an expert.”

  “Copy that,” Lorne said, after a moment. “I’ve got Dr. Ando searching the databases right now.”

  “I see that sending Dr. Beckett would be unwise,” Teyla said. “Perhaps you could also send us any information you have on Asgard physiology?”

  “Can do,” Lorne answered. There was a long silence, and Teyla turned, shading her eyes again to track the approaching jumper. It was much closer now, only a few minutes away, the familiar boxy shape dark against the bright sky.

  “At least Elizabeth and Ronon are ok,” Jackson said. “If we can help the Vanir, that’s great, but they’re our first priority.”

  “Yes.” Teyla nodded. “But I for one would like to ask that Vanir a few questions. There are many things it could tell us that we might find helpful.”

  “You know, if I had to pick one word for the Vanir, ‘helpful’ wouldn’t be it.”

  Teyla smiled in spite of herself. “That’s true, your previous experiences with them have not been pleasant.”

  “I liked the Asgard,” Jackson said, abruptly serious. “They really liked Jack — General O’Neill — which shows a certain amount of good taste, and they did try to help us, for some definitions of ‘help,’ anyway.”

  “And yet they destroyed themselves,” Teyla said. It was something the other Lanteans didn’t like to talk about, and she had never heard the full story.

  Jackson nodded. “They were dying off as a species. They had ceased to reproduce sexually, and millennia of cloning had degraded their genetic material past the point where even they could repair it. They didn’t want to linger like that, dying slowly and in pain, and they didn’t want to risk their knowledge falling into the hands of people who’d make bad use of it. They gave us, us Tau’ri, a library computer containing — well, I don’t know if it’s all their knowledge, but it was everything they were willing to trust us with, anyway. And then they blew up their planet. No more Asgard, no more Asgard technology, gone, just like that.” He shrugged. “Or so we thought. Except that some of them seem to have made it to the Pegasus Galaxy, and they weren’t planning on going quietly. Whatever they’re up to, it’s probably got something to do with preserving their species.”

  “Yes, I s
ee.” Teyla turned to look for the jumper, not sure she could hide her feelings. Surely it would have been better for the Asgard to fight, to protect what they had — and that, she thought, was surely Osprey’s blood speaking. But it was also Athosian. How many times had they been Culled to the bone, and brought themselves back as a people? Perhaps it was simply the way things were in Pegasus, as opposed to the Milky Way.

  “Teyla, Dr. Jackson.” Lorne’s voice crackled through the radio. “We’ve got your files ready to transmit.”

  Jackson’s fingers moved on his laptop, and he nodded.

  “Go ahead, Major,” Teyla said. That was good: they would waste no time on the ground this way.

  “Hang on,” Jackson said. “Major, this — there’s hardly anything there.”

  “It’s what we’ve got,” Lorne answered. “You know they don’t give us access to that fancy library, that’s all on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Well, at the moment, we really need to know it,” Jackson said.

  “Sorry, Dr. Jackson. You have everything we do.”

  “Thank you, Major,” Teyla said, smoothly. “We will contact you as soon as we know anything more.”

  It wasn’t a long flight back to where the Vanir ship had crashed. Daniel used that time to brace himself on the bench seat behind Teyla and Sheppard and read and re-read the material Lorne had sent to his laptop. At least there were some notes on Asgard stasis devices, and specifically on the controls, though he thought he could have handled that for himself. The memory of Jack on Thor’s ship, held in failing stasis while he used the knowledge of the Ancient database to try to figure out some way to stop the Replicators, rose unbidden in his mind, and he shoved it away. That had all worked out in the end; no point in thinking about it now. The main thing was to get their people out of stasis and find out if they’d guessed right about the Vanir’s plan to repair their damaged DNA by stealing genetic material from the Ascended Asgard who had helped Elizabeth to ascend in the first place. It was the only thing that made sense. And it wasn’t all that surprising that someone had come to Elizabeth’s rescue, just as Oma Desala had come to his all those years ago. It seemed to be something the successfully Ascended were prone to doing, no matter what the rules were supposed to prevent. And no matter whether it was truly wise or not. Daniel grimaced at the memory of Oma locked forever in combat with Anubis. Everything he tried to do on this mission seemed to lead back to something else he didn’t particularly want to think about.

  Right, he told himself. Asgard first aid. Unfortunately, that file was painfully short, and dominated by a crude drawing indicating little more than gross anatomy. The note said it had been done in Area 51, and Daniel decided he didn’t really want to know any of the details. What they really needed was a doctor, somebody who could turn those notes into something like treatment.

  He looked up, feeling the jumper pitch down toward landing, and for the first time saw the Vanir ship where it had arrowed into the hillside. “Wow, that’s — final.”

  Sheppard shot him an unreadable glance. “We couldn’t exactly let them get away, could we?”

  “No, but I would have thought you might have done a bit less damage, you know, brought it down gently or something.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” Sheppard said, and brought the jumper to a stop beside its twin. “Let’s go.”

  He led them into the bowels of the wrecked ship, Teyla at his back, heading, Daniel was glad to see, for the stern. The emergency lighting was still working, casting faint shadows — another good sign, he thought, and hoped there would be enough power left to open the stasis pods.

  The system on this ship had diverged from the ones Thor used. He hid his immediate worry, and made himself look over the consoles carefully, identifying each of the control systems. They were all there, just laid out in a different order: no surprise, really, if the Vanir had diverged from the Milky Way’s Asgard thousands of years ago.

  “Well?” Sheppard demanded.

  “What?”

  “Can you open them?”

  Daniel looked at the controls again. “Yes. Yes, if there’s enough power left to run the circuits. But McKay can tell you that better than I can.”

  “There’s plenty of power,” McKay snapped. “As much as you could possibly want.”

  “Ok, then.” Daniel took a breath and pressed the sequence of buttons. The lights flickered and the deck shuddered as though the ship was trying to bring a second power source online.

  “I thought you said there was enough power,” Sheppard said.

  “There was.” McKay’s hands flew over a second set of controls. “Ok, yes. There is. We should be fine —”

  A chime sounded, two-toned and urgent, and the lights at the head of each pod went from blue to purple.

  “Jackson…” Sheppard clutched his P90 as though shooting something might help.

  “It’s ok,” Daniel said, and hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. “That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

  The chime stopped, and all the lights went out.

  Sheppard swore and swung his P90, the light attached to the barrel flicking from pod to pod and then settling on McKay’s console. “McKay…”

  “On it.” McKay’s hands were moving with purpose, pale in the sharp light. “Ok. Ok, I think we’ve — yes. Got it.”

  The emergency lights flicked back on, and in the same moment the lids of the stasis pods began to slide open. Teyla darted past him to reach for Elizabeth’s groping hand, and a moment later Ronon dragged himself to a sitting position.

  “This sucks.”

  “It’s a lot better than it could be,” McKay said, and offered a hand to steady him as he climbed out. A shower of sparks fountained from the pod, and everyone flinched.

  “Are you all right?” Sheppard asked, and Ronon nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “The pods aren’t,” McKay said, fiddling with the controls. “That one’s definitely out of commission, and — oh, no, no, no, the other one’s gone too. So much for using them on the Vanir.”

  Sheppard acknowledged that with a look, but his focus was on the rescued. “Elizabeth?”

  She nodded. “I’m unhurt. Though that wasn’t the most pleasant thing that’s ever happened to me.” She looked around. “We’re on the Asgard ship?”

  “Rodney shot it down,” Sheppard said. “Unfortunately, the control room was destroyed, and that killed most of the crew. We’ve got one survivor, but he’s in a bad way.”

  “I’ve got some notes on Asgard physiology,” Daniel offered, “but they’re not much.”

  Elizabeth nodded decisively. “Lead the way.”

  “This way,” McKay said, after only the briefest of pauses.

  Someone — Sheppard, Daniel suspected — had wrapped the injured Vanir in one of the Mylar blankets from the first aid kits. Elizabeth went to her knees beside the body and, after a moment, Daniel joined her, turning his tablet so that she could see the illustration. Her eyebrows lifted.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all we’ve got.” Daniel shrugged. “Maybe there’s more back at the SGC, but this is what they have on Atlantis.”

  Elizabeth folded back the blanket, cocking her head to one side as she studied the Vanir’s still form. Lying there, it looked even more fragile than the Milky Way Asgard, the enormous eyes closed and the skinny limbs sprawling. Elizabeth checked for a pulse, then felt carefully along the arms and legs, and finally, delicately, over the enormous dome of its head. She was careful not to move its neck, her hands quick and competent, and Daniel remembered that she had come to the SGC from medical NGOs. Apparently she’d spent enough time in the field to learn more than the basics of first aid.

  “He’s alive,” Elizabeth said, sitting back on her heels. “Or she. And I don’t see any obviously life-threatening injuries. But I do feel what I think is a skull fracture, and that means we need to get him to a doctor as quickly as possible. Better still,
bring the doctor here to stabilize him.”

  Sheppard bit his lip. “We’ve a bit of a problem there, Dr. Weir.”

  “The creature that eats plastic is still on Atlantis,” Teyla said, “and the gate room is still contaminated. Major Lorne is rightly unwilling to risk spreading the disease here.”

  “He still needs a doctor,” Elizabeth said. “This is a severe head injury. If he were human, I’d say he was already in a coma, and I have no idea what that would mean for a being that has this much brain.”

  “Is there anyone back at the main settlement?” Sheppard looked at Teyla. “Have they managed to recruit any doctors yet?”

  “Not that I am aware of,” Teyla said. “There have been some nurses who have visited, but their skills are greatly in demand elsewhere.”

  “They were willing to take me as an assistant,” Elizabeth said, “so I’d say they didn’t have anyone better.”

  “Not the Genii,” Ronon said.

  “They sort of owe us over that Sora person,” Daniel said, but the others ignored him.

  “What about the Travelers?” Teyla asked. “I have heard that some of their ships have salvaged medical devices.”

  “Dekaas,” Elizabeth said. She pushed herself to her feet. “I told you, he treated me when I was with the Travelers. He had… some experience treating other species besides humans. If we can’t get someone from Atlantis, he might be able to help.”

  “The Wraith worshipper,” Ronon said, grimly, and Daniel winced. That had not been one of his better moments.

  “You remember, we also met Dekaas,” Teyla said, to Sheppard. “While we were searching for Elizabeth. Apparently he had been on one of the Wraith hives, but he has been accepted among the Travelers for many years now. If we knew where to find him —”

  “They were going to a rendezvous,” Ronon said, reluctantly. “After Manaria.”

  “Do you remember where?” Teyla asked.

  Ronon nodded. “Hirard.”