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

by Melissa Scott

  They walked down into heat and the smell of dust and hot metal. Rodney flinched, wishing he’d brought a hat and sunscreen, and Elizabeth pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose and mouth for a moment, coughing, until she could settle herself. Teyla — as usual — seemed undisturbed, walking a little ahead to offer both hands to the Traveler leader.

  “Larrin. A pleasure.”

  “Likewise,” Larrin answered, looking past her. “So, there’s Dr. McKay, but who’s she?”

  “That is our missing person,” Teyla answered. “Her name is Elizabeth, and we are deeply grateful to you for having helped her.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Larrin answered, but her eyes were wary. And well they should be, Rodney thought. When Teyla starts talking about how she owes you — you should be extra careful, that’s all. “But I’m not sure I understand why you’re back here.”

  “We would like to borrow one of your doctors,” Teyla answered. “Elizabeth worked with him to earn her passage. I believe he can help us with some further questions.”

  Rodney blinked, and felt Teyla’s voice in the back of his mind. *Let us not mention contamination until we absolutely have to.*

  *Right.* Rodney forced a smile. “Right.”

  “Which one?” Larrin asked.

  “Dekaas, his name was.”

  “On Durant.” Larrin nodded. “I’ll tell the captain to let you on board.”

  “We’d like to take him back to Sateda with us,” Teyla said. “We have an injured alien that he may be able to help us treat.”

  “I don’t see why we should let you walk off with one of our doctors,” Larrin said. “They don’t exactly grow on trees.”

  “We would bring him back as soon as possible,” Teyla answered. “And while he was gone, I would be willing to leave one of our largest aid kits as partial payment.”

  *It’ll come back empty!* Rodney protested silently, and felt Teyla’s amusement in answer.

  *Yes. And we have plenty more. Right now we need Dekaas.*

  “It’s true that we have a couple of other doctors at the gathering right now,” Larrin said. “And maybe use of your equipment would help make up for not having him around for a while. But you’d need to bring him back as soon as you were done with him.”

  “I do not think this will take too very long,” Teyla said. Rodney felt the shadow of sorrow cross her mind. “Either he will be able to help or he will not.”

  “Right.” Larrin eyed them for a moment longer, not visibly persuaded. Rodney could feel the sun beating down on the back of his neck, his skin reddening by the second. A breath of wind lifted the fine dust that covered the paving, and Elizabeth smothered a cough. Teyla waited, still smiling, and Larrin sighed, reaching for the radio she wore at her hip. “Give me a minute. Durant!”

  She stepped back as she spoke, not quite out of earshot, but far enough that Rodney could only hear fragments of the conversation. “— take Dekaas with them… Yes, I know… Yes, fair enough.” She lowered the radio, frowning, and rejoined them. “All right. We won’t object to him going with you, but the decision is up to him.” She looked at Elizabeth. “I expect you know where you’re going?”

  “I know Durant,” Elizabeth answered with a smile of her own, and Larrin nodded.

  “Go on, then. And give my love to Colonel Sheppard.”

  “Thank you.” Elizabeth nodded in turn, and started toward the larger of the two ships parked opposite the jumper. Even by Traveler standards, it looked a bit battered, its hull a discouraging shade of rust, stains trailing from several of the access ports. It bore the marks of energy weapons, too, most of them older, and the ladder that led to the main hatch rattled alarmingly under Rodney’s weight.

  A teenaged girl was waiting just inside the hatch, her dark hair braided tightly against her skull. She was dressed in the same random mix of styles that all the Travelers seemed to affect, but there was a heavy energy weapon strapped at her waist, and Rodney didn’t doubt that she knew how to use it. Her attention was all on Elizabeth, however.

  “Wow, so you’re really Lantean? Who’d have guessed that?”

  “I certainly didn’t,” Elizabeth said, with a smile. “Cara, this is Teyla Emmagen and Dr. Rodney McKay.”

  Cara nodded politely, but turned back to Elizabeth immediately. “Did you remember anything else?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “A few things. Not as much as I would like. Is Dekaas in the infirmary?”

  “Yes.” Cara’s eyes fell. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be nosy.”

  “It’s all right,” Elizabeth said — and meant it, Rodney thought. “This way.”

  She led them through a series of shabby corridors, following, Rodney realized, a green line painted on the deck. It ended at an open door, through which Rodney could see the corner of an examining table and a wall of closed cabinets. There was no sign of this Dekaas, and he saw Elizabeth frown.

  “Dekaas?”

  An inner door slid open, and a gray-haired man appeared, drying his hands on a towel which he promptly discarded into a sealed container. “Elizabeth. I see your people found you.”

  “They did.” She smiled at that, an unexpected, beautiful expression, and Rodney caught himself smiling with her. Dekaas smiled, too, though it was more restrained.

  “I’m glad for you.” He nodded to Teyla. “Teyla. I don’t know this other.”

  “Rodney McKay,” Teyla said. “Also of Atlantis.”

  “Larrin said you needed help with an injured alien.” Dekaas lowered his voice so that he was barely breathing the word. “Wraith?”

  “No.” Teyla shook her head. “I will be honest with you, it is highly unlikely that you have ever seen such a being. Even the Lanteans know little of them, and they are more common in their galaxy than in ours.”

  “Then why not get a Lantean doctor?” Dekaas tipped his head to one side in a weirdly familiar gesture. Wraith, Rodney thought, even as Dekaas corrected himself. “They’re far better trained than I am, never mind being more familiar with these aliens.”

  “We can’t,” Elizabeth said. Teyla gave her a swift, sidelong glance, but did not protest. “I can’t give you any more details than that, but I give you my word it’s true.”

  Dekaas looked from her to Teyla. “You’re still worried that she’s a Replicator.”

  “It has not been satisfactorily disproven,” Teyla answered.

  “And you’d let this alien die because of that?”

  “We cannot risk all our people’s lives to save someone who is almost certain to die himself, but we cannot leave him untreated, either,” Teyla said. She paused. “But if you have records of your proof —”

  Dekaas sighed heavily. “And I’m wasting time. Right, I’ll come. Larrin said we get the use of one of your aid kits while I’m gone.”

  Teyla dipped her head. “That is correct.”

  “Right.” Dekaas gave the infirmary a sweeping glance. “All right. I need to pull together a kit — which will include the proof I have that Elizabeth’s as human as anyone — and get someone to cover while I’m gone. Give me fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “Of course,” Teyla said. “We will return to the jumper and collect the aid kit for your people.”

  Rodney tapped his fingers nervously on the puddle jumper’s console, his worry no secret from Teyla, who sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. *Dekaas is coming,* she said mentally. *You know he said it would take him a little while to pack up his medical equipment, and there is little use in bringing a doctor with us if we do not give him time to bring the things he will need.*

  Rodney grimaced, but his hands stopped moving. *I don’t like this,* he replied. *How do we even know he’s on the up and up?*

  *We do not,* Teyla said. *But he is our only alternative at the moment. Besides,* she said, casting a sideways glance at him, *Elizabeth thinks well of him.*

  And that was an entirely different pool of rolling emotions, worry and regret and relief all at once. />
  *You are usually happier to be proved right,* Teyla observed. *After all, you are the one who insisted that Elizabeth was alive, and here she is. She is sitting right behind us.*

  Rodney met her eyes, his thought involuntary. *If she’s really Elizabeth.* He got to his feet. “I’m going to get Dekaas to hurry,” he said aloud, scrambling around the rear seats and exiting the puddle jumper.

  Teyla sighed. *It will do no good!* she thought after him. *He is already hurrying.* There was no reply.

  Elizabeth leaned forward from the seat behind the pilot’s, her arms crossed around her middle. “Same old Rodney.”

  “In some ways,” Teyla said. Of course Elizabeth was not aware of the silent conversation. She knew nothing of Rodney’s experiences with the Wraith, or of how they had left him with the residual Wraith telepathy that allowed him to speak privately with her.

  “What’s the date?”

  Teyla looked around.

  “The date,” Elizabeth said firmly. “What day is it?”

  “According to the reckoning of your people, today is February 24, 2010,” Teyla replied.

  Elizabeth sat back in her seat, nodding slowly. “February 24, 2010. The last things I remember were in June, 2007. Not quite three years.”

  “Yes,” Teyla said. “That was when we lost you to the Asurans. You truly do not remember anything since then?”

  “Not until a few weeks ago,” Elizabeth said. “When I was on Mazatla.” Her frown deepened. “I have no idea what happened between.”

  “A great many things,” Teyla said ruefully. There were so many things Elizabeth had missed. The war between the Wraith and the Asurans. Atlantis’ return to Earth. The war against Queen Death. She did not even know that Torren existed. “I do not know where to begin.”

  “It’s going to take a lot of catching up,” Elizabeth said. She took a deep breath. “Who’s in charge in Atlantis?”

  “Colonel Sheppard is temporarily in charge. While the IOA considers a replacement for Richard Woolsey.”

  “Woolsey?” Elizabeth’s voice went up a tone. “Woolsey was in charge in Atlantis?”

  “He did a very good job,” Teyla said, obscurely defensive of him. He was not at all a bad man, and he had become a good leader. “After Colonel Carter.”

  “And Carter is where?”

  “In command of the cruiser General Hammond,” Teyla said. “But perhaps we should not talk of these things. I am not certain that the colonel would approve of telling you of our command structure until Dr. Beckett has examined you.”

  To her relief, Elizabeth did not argue. “Of course,” she said. “It’s wise to be prudent. Don’t tell me anything that makes you uncomfortable.” Which of course was a point in her favor. Someone programmed by the Replicators or others to find out information would push harder. There was a silence, and then Elizabeth said, “So how are you?”

  “I am well,” Teyla said, and was surprised to discover in that moment how much she meant it. She had made her peace with the Gift and her Wraith heritage. She had at last untangled her relationship with Kanaan and found a place where they could parent Torren together without conflict. And she was happy in her friends, in her family, in all those she loved. For the first time in many years she could truly say that things were well.

  “That’s good,” Elizabeth said, and her keen eyes were warm.

  Teyla smiled. “Perhaps you do not remember all you said to me when you were Ascended, but I do, and I thank you for it.”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “I know.” Teyla glanced out the forward window of the jumper, remembering Elizabeth’s presence in her dreams. Dream-Elizabeth — Ascended Elizabeth — had helped her find a way to reconcile the two parts of her heritage, and for that she would always be grateful. There was still no sign of Rodney and Dekaas returning. She hoped Rodney would not annoy the man to the point where he would not help them.

  “Maybe I should go get Dekaas,” Elizabeth said. “Rodney can be…”

  “Yes.” Teyla nodded. “Though he has changed as well in the time you have been gone. Perhaps more than is apparent on the outside.”

  “It’s not just his hair?”

  “No.” She smiled.

  “It’s a little disconcerting. It looks like Michael.”

  “Yes,” Teyla said shortly.

  “Do we know what ever happened to him?”]

  “I killed him,” Teyla said. She could not regret that, not for one moment. Of all those she had killed, Michael was the one whose death she regretted least.

  “Ah.” Elizabeth leaned back in her seat. “I have missed some things around here.”

  And how to explain that tangle, her long captivity in late pregnancy, the birth of her son? How to even begin to speak of those, the worst days of her life? She had not yet spoken of them to anyone, even John who already knew or could guess the worst of it.

  “You will have much to catch up on,” Teyla said, her eyes on the distance beyond the puddle jumper’s window. “Dr. Jackson said that he was confused by all that had transpired, and he was only gone a year, not nearly three.”

  “My mother.” Elizabeth’s voice was suddenly flat, and Teyla twisted around in the seat to look at her. Elizabeth’s hands were clenched. “They must have told her that I was dead.”

  “I expect so,” Teyla said.

  “I can’t even imagine how that hurt her.”

  Teyla reached back over the seat, taking Elizabeth’s cold hands in hers. “Now you will have something of great joy to tell her. That is what you must think of. The unexpected joy.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes searched her face, taut muscles relaxing. “You’re right,” she said. “We all have to look to the future.”

  There was nothing to do but wait. Well, wait and stare at the weird creature the Lanteans called either Vanir or Asgard, but Ronon didn’t think that got them any further. What little he knew about the Vanir, he didn’t like: they’d invaded Atlantis, kidnapped McKay — and Jackson, who’d been visiting at the time — and nearly gotten everyone killed by the Wraith as a side effect. No, he didn’t like the Vanir at all. Though they seemed to have an unreasonable fondness for Jackson. The archeologist was studying the writing on a panel between two darkened consoles, his hands stuffed in his pockets as though to remind him not to touch. Every time they’d had to deal with the Vanir, Jackson had been involved, even though he’d barely managed to get to the Pegasus Galaxy.

  “Hey, Jackson. Why do the Vanir like you so much?”

  “What?” Jackson turned away from the wall, looking genuinely startled. “No, it’s Jack they like, not me. General O’Neill, that is. And anyway, that doesn’t matter anymore, because these aren’t our Asgard.”

  “Every time you come to Atlantis, these guys show up.”

  “That’s not quite accurate. That first time, they were after yet another of Janus’s unfinished devices —”

  “Everybody’s favorite,” Sheppard said.

  “Yes, well, we’ve had to deal with him more than you have.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve had some real delights. The Attero device was about as bad as it gets.” Sheppard rested one hip on the nearest console, folding his arms on the stock of his P90.

  “Agreed,” Jackson said. “And that was what the Vanir were after that time. It had nothing to do with me or McKay, it was just bad luck that he accidentally activated it. This time, it seems as though they’re looking for people who have ascended and — voluntarily or not, been un-ascended. Which, yes, would include me, but their real interest seems to be in Elizabeth. Which makes some sense if she was indeed aided to ascend by an Ascended Asgard.”

  “I’m still trying to get my head around that one,” Sheppard said. “I thought only the Ancients could ascend.”

  “We don’t know that,” Jackson answered. “What we thought we knew was that only Ancients had ascended, plus one or two humans who didn’t exactly manage to make it stick. Not to mention at least one Goa�
��uld. But there’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about the whole process.”

  “There’s what we figured out that time McKay got himself zapped by the ascension machine,” Ronon said.

  “Which still doesn’t add up to very much,” Jackson answered. “Since McKay didn’t manage to retain any of the information he was supposed to have learned in the process.”

  “What’s your problem with McKay?” Ronon asked. He’d been wondering that for a while, but there’d never been any chance to ask.

  Jackson turned sharply away from the wall. “I don’t have a problem with him. He’s — a very intelligent man and apparently has been very useful on Atlantis.”

  “See? You’re doing it again.” Ronon carefully didn’t look at Sheppard.

  “Doing —” Jackson darted a wounded look at Sheppard, but seemed to get no help there. He pushed his glasses to a better position, choosing his words with visible care. “McKay wasn’t precisely easy to work with back at the SGC. He gave Sam — Colonel Carter — a really hard time, he was abusive to his subordinates — in fact, he was generally just an ass. Now, from the way everyone acts around him here, he’s clearly gotten better, at least enough for you to put up with his behavior, but he hasn’t exactly let it go when he’s around me. He’s still trying to get me to argue with him about our salaries, for God’s sake. And whether archeology is a real science.”

  “You have to let it roll off you,” Sheppard said.

  Jackson showed teeth in an almost Wraith-like smile. “I am tired of cutting Rodney McKay slack he hasn’t earned.”

  “He’s earned it,” Ronon said. He saw Jackson take a deep breath, and let it out, the tension draining from his shoulders.

  “Yeah, so I hear.”

  There was a little silence, and then Sheppard said, “You know, Ronon’s got a point about these rogue Asgard only showing up when you’re around.”

  He had that little smile that meant it was at least partly a joke, and Jackson gave him a sidelong glance. “Except that from what Elizabeth said, it was an Ascended Asgard who rescued her, and who presumably un-ascended her after she broke all the rules by rescuing McKay — which, by the way, I am taking as an indication that he’s definitely changed for the better.”