Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen (Stargate Atlantis)

by Whitelaw, Sonny

  “Hey! How’d you do that?”

  Outside, a loud explosion abruptly overwhelmed the sounds of fighting. They both instinctually ducked, but the damp stones that made up the tiny cell only shuddered. It was frustrating as all hell not to be able to see what was going on, but this time around their room didn’t exactly come with a view. “They must’ve figured out how to use the C-4. Wonder what they blew up?” Just as the words were out of his mouth, a series of increasingly loud rumbles warned him that something big was collapsing.

  Teyla quickly untied the rope around his wrists. “It is likely that some of those who now rebel against the leaders of this Citadel already had the means of destruction at their disposal.”

  “Wraithcraft?”

  Nodding, Teyla began exploring the damp walls for some means of escape. “Remember when we were in the marketplace, Yann spoke of blackpowder to remove unwanted tree stumps from their fields.”

  “Same deal wherever you go.” He examined the way the set of bars opened and closed. The locking mechanism was about three yards away, along the wall. Even with their bindings tied together to form a lasso, there was no way they’d get enough leverage going to force it open. And digging the bars out from the floor was not an option, given the hardness of the black stone.

  “What do you mean?” Teyla was feeling beneath the wooden bench.

  “No matter what religion people follow, someone always figures out a way to bend the rules to fit whatever it is that they want to do.”

  She stood and frowned at the bench. “How then can one discern what is truly right and what is indeed wrong?”

  Shrugging, Aiden replied, “My grandparents always taught me that you know the difference in your own heart.” He looked up at the ceiling, thick with mold and something more rancid. If anything, this place actually reeked worse than the open sewers outside.

  “You were fortunate to have had such people to care for you.”

  He smiled in fond memory, and felt a stab of guilt for not being able to let them know where he was. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

  A movement outside had Teyla snatching up her bonds and wrapping them loosely around her wrists. Aiden did the same. The next person to open their cell door would be in for a painful surprise.

  “Aiden?” Lisera’s tearful face appeared around the corner of the cell.

  Dropping the rope, Aiden grabbed the bars. “Lisera! How did you get here?”

  The girl’s face was streaked with grime and blood from a cut on her cheek. Her eyes were filled with the same terror that Aiden had seen when he’d found her in the ditch. Most of the clothes she’d worn from Atlantis were now gone, replaced by rags even more filthy than her original rough burlap covering. She also sported a pair of oversized pants that covered the cast on her leg. “It is the only safe place to hide. Outside…” She swallowed and met Teyla’s eyes. Even in the dim light of the cell, he could see her face pale further. “Those elder Chosen who had taken up residence in their ancestral homes, the Stations, to protect us from the Wraith, were pulled out into the streets and…and quartered.”

  “Yann’s group of rebels did this?” Teyla’s voice was stiff with shock.

  “No.” Lisera shook her head vehemently. “Gat’s men, the ones who control the Citadel, first killed Kesun. Then many others took up the cry. Yann tried to stop them, for he knows that without the Chosen there will be no protection against the Wraith.”

  “Where is your Shield?”

  Eyes darting between them, Lisera replied, “I threw it aside. Any who are seen with a blue Shield are torn apart. The alleys of the Citadel run red with the blood of not only the Chosen, but those who are now accused of conspiring to become Chosen.”

  “Oh, great,” Aiden muttered. “Sounds like everyone’s turning on one another.”

  Tears silently fell down Lisera’s face, and she whispered, “It is as if the entire world has become stricken with a madness that sets brother against brother. I fear that if it does not soon cease, the Wraith need not bother with their culling, for none will be left alive.”

  Aiden figured it probably wasn’t quite as bad as that, but, to a girl like Lisera, the sort of anarchy she was describing would seem that way. “Listen, see that sliding bar down there? Can you open it and let us out?”

  Eyes wide with alarm, she vehemently shook her head. “If you go outside, you will be killed as they have slaughtered the Chosen, for others are seeking you, claiming that your presence will bring the Wraith down upon us.”

  “If we remain here,” Teyla explained, “those who imprisoned us will return and kill us anyway.”

  “No.” Lisera said determinedly. “Not you, for you are not of the Chosen.”

  “Perhaps not, but they will kill Major Sheppard and Dr McKay.”

  Torn with indecision, Lisera bit her lip. “But you will be spared. I am sorry for the others, but I do not want you to die, Aiden.”

  He stared at her. “They’re our friends. If they die, we can’t help save your world from the Wraith.”

  “In which case, we will all die,” Teyla added. The tone in her voice left no room for doubt. “I have seen what the Wraith do to worlds like yours. When they come—and in this both Gat and the Chosen are correct in stating that they most assuredly will come with their great ships—they will leave little behind.”

  Still uncertain, Lisera cringed when the sounds of more fighting penetrated their confines.

  “Do you know where Major Sheppard and Dr McKay are being held?” Aiden asked.

  Lisera glanced over her shoulder. “Two levels below this one, in a cell near where some of your bags are being kept.”

  “Which means someone will definitely be coming back,” Aiden said. He suspected it was more likely their packs than the case with the gene therapy. “Lisera, if you release us, and we can get our things back, we’ll be able to help you.” The desperate look in her eyes demanded an affirmation of his sincerity. “I ”I promise. Okay? Hey—” He offered her a grin. “I’m a warrior from Atlantis, right?”

  “Lisera,” Teyla said when the girl continued to hesitate. “Releasing us is the only way we can help both you and your people.”

  Something in the Athosian’s expression bothered Aiden. He shot her a questioning look, but she dismissed it. Lisera gave a jerky nod, and said to Aiden, “You promise.” Then she hobbled back and opened the locking mechanism to their cell.

  The smell of burned timber and metallic compounds assaulted Rodney’s olfactory nerves. Less pungent than the eye-watering stench of the dungeon they’d until recently had the pleasure of inhabiting, the odor was terrifying familiar. He glanced back at Ford and Teyla, who were assisting Lisera up the last of the stone steps. “Do you think we should be rushing outside?”

  Sheppard, who was ahead of him, suddenly let loose with a surprisingly colorful string of curses. Urged on by Teyla’s expression, Rodney followed the Major out into the square, and squinting against the late afternoon sunlight, looked around the streets.

  Any momentary relief that Rodney had felt at their freedom was immediately overcome by shocked outrage. Staring up at the twisted, smoking ruin that had once been the Enclave, he burst out, “Are they insane?” The desperation in his voice was tinged with denial. Even the trees that had surrounded the once-elegant structure now looked like a bunch of spent match heads. “What would possess them to destroy the very thing that they most need?”

  “They are driven by the madness of hatred.”

  In the back of his mind, he recognized that Teyla’s words were the product of sorrow and not indifference. Nonetheless, her calm tone danced on his last nerve. Rodney whirled on her, snapping off a reply. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen! The Chosen might not have been responsible for the way these people were forced to live, but the fact remains that this entire situation would never have come about if they hadn’t regarded the gene as providing them with some sort of divine power!”

  “How does that make any dif
ference now?” Ford asked, staring up at the smoldering remains perched on top of the rocky hill.

  “You agreed with me!” He loathed the way his voice betrayed his faltering control.

  Teyla reached out to grasp his arm, her expression gentle but unyielding. “You are not to blame for what has come to pass,” she said firmly.

  A nice sentiment, to be sure, but an empty one. And Teyla would know, because she’d vilified his stand from the outset. Rodney swallowed hard against a surge of nausea.

  “If anyone’s at fault, Rodney, it’s me.” The bitter edge to Sheppard’s voice was unmistakable. “I should’ve seen this coming.”

  Damn him. The man wasted no opportunity to martyr himself, justified or not.

  “How?” Teyla said, turning to the Major. “You were not to know that Yann would be waiting in ambush for us, nor that he in turn would be betrayed by those who hunger for even greater power.”

  “Because history has a bad habit of repeating itself. Here or Earth, seems it makes no damned difference.”

  “We should take the transport back to the jumper and get out of here while we can,” Ford asserted. He was holding Lisera by the arm. When her eyes widened, he added, “All of us.”

  “But you promised to help save everyone. You promised!” the girl cried hysterically.

  The anger in Rodney’s belly turned into a tight, sour ball. His childhood had been defined by belittlement and an utter lack of compassion. To escape that, he’d had to become the best, at everything. Yet somewhere in his pursuit of this goal, he had in turn become equally dispassionate; indeed, some would argue, lacking in humanity. It wasn’t until meeting Samantha Carter that he’d understood that truly great science was inspired, and that his own suppressed but deeply powerful emotions had been channeled into arrogance. “No!” he declared, whirling around to face his teammates. “I won’t accept that we can’t stop this and make them see reason.”

  “And exactly how do you suggest we accomplish that?” Sheppard demanded. “We’re four unarmed people in a city the size of downtown LA. You want to try and make peace amongst God knows how many fanatics on…I’m not even sure how many sides? This place was a powder keg before we arrived. We may have lit the fuse, but sooner or later it was gonna blow, just like it has dozens, probably hundreds of times in the past.”

  “So… What? We just let them destroy themselves and high-tail it out of here?”

  “I believe it may be too late for that.” Teyla’s face stiffened as she spoke. “The Wraith have come.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Well, that answered one question. The EM fields couldn’t block Teyla’s sensitivity to the Wraith. Of course, if the Chosen had mostly been hunted down and killed—which was entirely possible now that they couldn’t sequester themselves in the Enclave—there was no telling how many of the Shields were still in use.

  In the near distance, John could hear the sounds of pitched hand-to-hand combat drawing closer. The heavy clomp of boots pounding the cobblestones rounded the corner of a narrow lane, and six people spilled out into the square. There was a momentary pause before the wild-eyed front-runner pointed to the team and screamed, “Kill them! They are of the Chosen!”

  “What?” Rodney squealed. “No! We’re not Chosen. See?” He pulled his now filthy jacket aside to show that he wasn’t wearing a Shield.

  The rabble, insane with bloodlust, weren’t about to enter into a discussion. Fortunately, some of them were armed with the team’s P-90s and sidearms. Since they brandished the weapons like clubs, John could only conclude that Gat and Balzar’s goon squad had been overrun, and, having taken the guns as spoils of of the infighting, their new owners apparently had no idea how to use them.

  One of the men, an overweight and bulbous-nosed guy who looked like he’d spent most of his life propped up against some bar, made the by-now common mistake of thinking that Teyla was easy game. As he bent low to tackle her, she dispatched him with a sickening kick to his head, and wrenched the P-90 from his grasp before he’d even hit the ground. John took out a further two in quick succession, while Ford disarmed a fourth, breaking the guy’s arm in the process.

  During the scuffle, the last two had managed to herd Rodney and Lisera to the far side of the square. Hampered by her leg cast, Lisera fell. Rodney dove on top of her, screaming something unintelligible, trying to protect her and drag her out of the way at the same time. Breaking into a run, John raised his now reacquired P-90—and cursed. The magazine was empty. Ford must have been having the same problem, because he was pulling off his pack, scrambling for a new magazine. Neither of them was going to reload in time, and it was doubtful that John would reach Rodney before the men, but he had to try.

  A ghostly image caught the edge of his vision, along with that creeped-out sensation that the Wraith used to confuse their prey. “No, Major!” With the reflexes of a cat, Teyla knocked him to the ground—just out of the path of a Wraith beam, which scooped up McKay’s axe-wielding attackers.

  “God! That was close.” Half carrying Lisera, Rodney staggered upright and stared up at the sky. “The Darts can only mean that nobody’s deploying the defensive fields.”

  Accepting Teyla’s outstretched hand, John swung to his feet, caught the spare magazine that Ford tossed him, and reloaded his weapon. “Which means the Chosen are probably all dead.”

  “What about Yann’s rebels, and Balzar, and whoever-the-hell else received the gene therapy?” asked Rodney, his eyes wide in desperation.

  A good question, with a not-so-good answer. “Anyone carrying around one of those activated Shields is painting a bulls-eye on his chest.”

  Rodney’s face scrunched in disbelief. “You mean nobody’s protecting this place?”

  “Not quite no one.” Teyla pointed to the east, where a Dart plummeted into the ground. They couldn’t see where it hit, but the explosion was more than satisfactory.

  “We need to find—” John’s words were cut off when more people ran screaming through the square, trying, and failing, to outpace another Wraith beam. In the distance, he heard several more explosions as Darts encountered EM fields. The once blue sky was filled with plumes of smoke. “More Shields,” he finished, shouting above the noise.

  Dozens, possibly hundreds of people were now streaming into the square. From the opposite direction, a smaller band of warriors emerged and met them head-on in a furious assault. After a moment, John realized that the warriors were not actually attacking, but instead were determinedly heading in the team’s direction, defending themselves as they came. Defensive tactics or not, the disciplined warriors, better armed and better protected, were methodically cutting the disorganized rabble to pieces when another Wraith Dart sped overhead. The emerging blue beam carved a path through both groups alike, sucking up bodies like an airborne harvester.

  “This is insane!” Rodney yelled as the team backed into what looked like a blacksmith’s shop. “Absolutely, unquestionably nuts!”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of urban warfare,” John called back. “Lisera, do you know where there are any Shields?”

  White-faced with terror, Lisera nodded jerkily, and pointed to the mangled and limbless torsos now scattered about the square. Battle-axes made for decisive work in close combat. “When the Enclave was destroyed and the cache of Shields ransacked, many claimed the Shields for themselves, and wear them as proof that they are not of the Chosen.”

  That kind of ass-backward reasoning was another thing he probably should have expected. “Okay. Rodney, stay here with Lisera. Ford, Teyla?”

  “On it, sir.” Ford was already outside, turning over the first body.

  “Major?” Teyla found a Shield on her first attempt, and tossed it to him just as another Dart came bearing down on them. With all the grace of a grand piano—which was surprising, given its aerodynamic shape—the Dart abruptly lost altitude and clipped the edge of a tall building. It tumbled end over end through a narrow street, mowing down a dozen rebel
s—or maybe they were Gat’s bully boys, it was hard to be sure from this angle—and came to a halt in a spectacular heap against the stone fountain in the middle of the square.

  The crash seemed to have quenched the rabble’s desire for fighting. Like cockroaches, they vanished back into the dark, narrow-gutted alleyways. The warriors reformed into ranks, while the tallest of them, sporting a large blue chevron on his breastplate, pointed to John and called, “The Chosen from Atlantis!”

  Muttering in relief and surprise, the warriors ran across the square to join them. The guy with the chevron removed his horned helmet, tucked it under one arm, and, stepping over a smoking chunk of the crashed Dart, slapped a bloodied fist across his chest. Presumably it was some sort of salute, because he dropped to one knee before John, and added, “By your will, Chosen one. We heard you were here and, praying to Dalera that you had been spared, came to release you.”

  Great, now he had an army. “Okay, well, where I come from a salute is enough. We’re not into the kneeling thing. What’s your name?”

  “Ushat,” he replied, standing and replacing his helmet. “I am the leader of Dalera’s warriors.”

  “I’m Major John Sheppard.” He pointed to Ford and Teyla, and introduced them.

  One of the warriors abruptly cried out. Jumping back like he’d been scalded, the man swung his axe down onto the ground, again and again, scattering pieces of wreckage. His companions laughed uneasily at him, until Ushat called out, “Enough.”

  Poking his head from the blacksmith’s door, Rodney called, “Did you find—?”

  Ford tossed him another Shield. An expression of disgust on his face, Rodney gingerly held the device between his fingers. “What is this stuff all over…”His voice trailed off.

  John followed Ushat across to where a few chunks of Wraith arm still twitched on the ground. The warrior who’d been doing the chopping was still looking around nervously.

  “Search the wreckage,” Ushat ordered his men.