He began dialing Admah, logging his results as the gate randomly disconnected and re-connected with other gates. When these first one hundred attempts yielded nothing in the way of a pattern, he dialed some more. After nearly three hundred attempts to dial up Admah, he felt that he had enough data, so he began feeding it to the computer and compiling a program that would track the signal phasing.
As he worked, he tried several more times to dial through to the planet, mostly to keep his fingers busy and to distract his mind from waiting on results. He was about to call it a night, and let the program search for the pattern while he rested, when he saw something different.
Moving quickly, he recorded the most recent signal. He dialed Admah’s gate again, and got the same result. The same phase-shifting signal was present as he’d seen on all his previous attempts, but this time there was something more. Riding on the signal, he detected a small burst of static, or signal — something that had not been present in the signal all the three hundred plus times he’d recorded it before.
“What’s this?”
The only way to find out exactly what he had found was to develop a filter that would remove the phase-shifting carrier from the static. If it was static. Somehow, he didn’t think so. It was a little too coincidental that the new signal would show up — and repeat — after he’d attempted the same connection more than 300 times without a sign of it. If Rodney had managed to get into the system on the other side, it would be like him to find a way to use the very thing preventing the gate from opening to send a message. If there was a message, no one else but Zelenka himself was likely to decipher it. He leaned in close and focused. There was no way to know how time sensitive the information would be. He wanted to give himself, Woolsey, and the team themselves as much time as possible. It might save lives.
Chapter Twenty-two
Sheppard stuck close to Mara as she made her way down the passageways back to her quarters. He’d been handed over to her moments after being removed from his quarters. He wasn’t happy about the deception, but he knew he’d be of more use to his team if he was free than if he was cooped up with them, waiting to be led off to slaughter.
“They think I’ve been taken to the arena,” he said.
“By now, they know differently,” Mara said. “They were all to be taken as soon as we cleared out. I heard Saul talking about it in the passageway.”
“What?” Sheppard said, stopping and grabbing her arm. “You didn’t say they were all going to be taken so quickly. What if he chooses one of the others, someone who can’t even activate the weapons, for the first battle?”
“The entertainment starts tonight,” she replied. “They will have to be prepared. There will be no real training, there isn’t time.”
“You people are out of your minds. This is barbaric. If they take Rodney or Cumby and put them in that ring, they’re going to get slaughtered.”
“No one will argue with Saul,” Mara said. “Most of them are just waiting for the big finale, and the rest hang on his every word. They have long since quit caring whether what we do is wrong, or right. They want to be amused. They want to be entertained. To them, Saul might as well be a prophet.”
“I have to get to my people.”
“Be patient, John Sheppard,” Mara said. She pulled gently free of his grip. “I will take you to where they are being held, but we have to give Saul and his men time to clear out. It’s normal for citizens to wander through the holding cells and study the combatants. We can join the others and you’ll have a chance to speak to your people. If we go rushing out there, there is no guarantee that Saul won’t lock you, and possibly me, up with the others, just to preserve his plan. I will get you down to them. I don’t know what good it’s going to do, but I can do that for you.”
“Thank you,” Sheppard said.
Mara stopped and turned, and he all but slammed into her. She wrapped him in her arms. “There are many of my people here,” she said, “but I have felt alone for a very long time. No one that I speak with, or drink with, or spend time with captivates me. I have felt as though I were dying inside, very slowly, for many years. When he first suggested it, Saul’s plan did not seem a bad one to me because I knew that it would bring an end to this ennui — this horrible, cloying boredom.
“Now there is you. When you and the other members of your team entered the room last night, I felt as if I’d woken from a very long sleep. We have had visitors before, but none of them called to me.”
Sheppard held her for a moment, and then pulled back. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “This place — this life — doesn’t have to be the last thing you experience before you die. Come with us. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but we are going to get off of this moon — my people will make it happen. Saul’s wrong, there’s much more to life than what you’ve experienced here. I think you’ve all just forgotten.”
“You may be right,” she said. “But I don’t know if I could start over. No matter how bad it has gotten, this is home — has always been home. So long…”
Her words trailed off. She glanced up at him again, wistfully, but she didn’t try to hold him again. “I was sort of hoping you’d be my final fling — that good thing to drive me over the edge into oblivion smiling. I know that must make me seem very shallow.”
“Yeah…I kind of figured that was what you had in mind,” Sheppard said. “The thing is, being held prisoner on a moon hurtling into a sun while my friends are forced to fight monsters against their will kind of drains the romance from me. It’s not that I’m not attracted.”
Mara dropped her eyes to the floor. “We’ll go to my quarters and have a drink. By the time we’re finished we should be able to get down to the holding cells and your people. If there is anything I can do to help you, I will. The more I think about how Saul has made so many decisions for me, the more I think — the last entertainment of one’s life should be something of their own choosing. If I anger him, maybe he’ll put me in the arena.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
The words hung in the air between them for a moment, and then Mara turned and led the way back to her quarters. Moments later they disappeared inside.
* * *
About an hour later, the two made their way back down the same hall, but turned off toward the arena. Sheppard had changed out of his uniform at Mara’s insistence. Neither of them believed Saul would buy that he’d converted so quickly, but it was important to appear to play along, just the same. Anything they could do that bought them time was worth the attempt.
He wore loose fitting pants of a soft, dark material, and a pullover shirt. The shirt was slightly large — he had insisted on wearing his equipment beneath it. When they stepped into the hallway, Mara giggled and hung on his arm like a love struck schoolgirl, and Sheppard played along. He drew her close so she leaned on his shoulder, and the two wove a bit as they walked to give the impression they’d had too much to drink.
They turned into the downward sloping passageway and followed the path the others had been led down earlier. There were a few other citizens lingering in the passageway, laughing and talking, and laying early bets on the night’s combat.
“The large one with the long hair,” one man said, “will put up a fight. He has the look of a warrior.”
“What would you know Danin?” the woman standing beside him said, laughing derisively. “You haven’t seen a real warrior in so long you wouldn’t know one if you saw him.”
“I know plenty,” Danin replied. “It’s in his eyes. And I’ve seen Alden Zane, the same as you have. There are plenty of warriors on Admah.”
Sheppard and Mara passed through the others as quickly as they could. Mara was forced to stop several times to introduce him to friends and acquaintances. One tall, dark haired man tipped his glass at Sheppard and nodded.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I had the feeling that you’d be in the arena tonight, and I was looking for
ward to it. Several of my friends and I have decided that, despite the fact you are not as large as some of your companions, if given the opportunity you’d acquit yourself well.”
“It didn’t seem the best use of my time,” Sheppard replied. “They probably have room for you though. Maybe we should see if they have armor in your size?”
The man frowned. He was about to say something more, but Mara burst out laughing and fell across Sheppard’s shoulder.
“I can see it now,” she said. “We can all go in there, wave our drinks at whatever adversary they send after us, and ask it how it likes the odds on the next fight. If we are truly lucky, we will wave one of the weapons at it, and it will charge, impaling itself and ending the fight in victory!”
They all stared at her, and then the dark haired man grinned. “I think you have started your celebration sooner than usual,” he said. “I hope the two of you will join us tonight?”
The woman who stood at his side was tall, thin, and had the most utterly bored expression on her face Sheppard had ever seen. Her clothing clung to her, and she was a very attractive woman, but every bit of passion had drained from her — maybe years in the past. She didn’t even pretend to pay attention to the conversation. Instead she stared off down the passageway toward the arena.
“Looks like that would be a bundle of laughs,” Sheppard said.
Mara pulled him away and started down the passageway again. The man stared after them, but the woman never acknowledged they’d been there at all.
“Friendly folks,” Sheppard observed.
“The only thing they care about is the entertainment,” Mara said. “They barely speak to one another, and she never speaks to anyone else. I have the feeling that, as far as they are concerned, tonight is too long to wait for it all to come to an end. It’s possible that the world will end, and she’ll never notice. She has been gone for years.”
They reached the room at the bottom of the passageway, and Mara turned him to the right.
“We need to examine all of the combatants,” she said. “Going straight to your people will draw attention, and if he locks you up with the others, you won’t have much chance of freeing them later.”
Sheppard nodded. He scanned the room and the various doors, then turned and stared at the huge arena entrance. They turned and started down the line of doors slowly. Mara pressed a button by the first door. It slid open — beams of energy criss-crossed the open frame, but they could see into the interior clearly.
“This is Balleth,” Mara said.
The man in the cell stood nearly seven feet tall. He wore leather boots, a dark, coarse tunic, and leather bands around his biceps. His hair was dark, and his eyes were darker. He glared out at them defiantly, but didn’t speak. He stood as if he were used to being studied and examined. He had obviously been in this position before.
“He’s undefeated in six combats, two with adversaries,” Mara said. “He’s a crowd favorite.”
“Friendly too,” Sheppard observed.
Mara closed the door, and they continued around the room. They saw a heavily muscled woman with wild eyes who paced her cell like a caged cat. There was a short, squat man with arms the size of tree trunks who held a huge axe in one hand. Then there was the blonde warrior from the previous night’s battle, Alden Zane, who nodded at them as they passed. Finally, they reached the door to the cell where Rodney and the others were being held.
As the door slid open they all turned, staring at Sheppard. They stood very still, as if in shock, and after a moment he took a sip from the drink he carried and frowned. “What?”
“Good to see you’ve been killing yourself out there trying to get us free,” Rodney said. “I’d hate to think you’d been drinking and… entertaining yourself.”
Sheppard smiled and stepped closer. “We have a better chance of getting you out with me on this side of the force field. What did you learn?”
He stepped back then, as if examining something, and swirled his drink. Mara strolled out of the cell, keeping a casual lookout for guards. Her absence also gave them a degree of privacy.
Rodney kept one eye on her as, in a low voice, he said, “The signal has been sent to Atlantis…at least I hope it has. We have about an eight hour window before the surface temperature gets too hot to make it to the gate. I’ve got the coordinates to another planet — not Atlantis, but a place that has never had a gate opened to or from Admah. If they got the message, they have the coordinates too. They should be waiting for us. The thing is, unless we can get the shield down in the upper city, we’re not going anywhere.”
“John,” Mara called, her voice light yet holding just enough warning to make him turn.
Saul was approaching from across the room. He smiled thinly, but there was no hint of amusement or good humor in the expression.
Glancing back at McKay, Sheppard murmured, “Leave the shield to me.”
Saul looked like a snake attempting to fool its prey with a broken smile. “Somehow I knew I’d find the two of you here eventually,”
“I come here before every entertainment,” Mara said with a shrug. If she was nervous, it didn’t show. “Why would today be any different? This is shaping up to be the finest entertainment in many years.”
“You didn’t stop to talk to the others,” Saul pointed out.
“Were you watching me?”
“Hey, I tried to talk to that first guy,” Sheppard cut in. “He wasn’t in a very chatty mood.”
“You don’t have to play games with me, Colonel,” Saul said. “If I believed you were any threat to me, or to the security of the entertainment, I’d have locked you up with the others from the start. I know you are checking on your people, and I suspect you still have some strange idea that you’ll escape. You are mistaken. You are very close to the end of your existence — we all are — and it’s going to be a glorious ending. You can embrace it, or try to run from it, but the outcome will be the same. You could even be proud to be a part of the end of it all…the battles tonight will be spectacular.”
“You’re such a cheerful guy,” Sheppard said. “I noticed that about you right away. Others tell me you have a serious side, but I have to tell you — I don’t see it.”
“You are a very amusing man, Colonel,” Saul said. “We’ll see how amused you are when tonight’s entertainment starts. One of your people will be the lead-off entertainment.”
Saul left, before Sheppard or anyone else could speak.
“How long before that battle?” Sheppard gripped Mara’s arm.
She shook free. “An hour — two at the most,” she said. “The early battles are less well attended — usually — but this is different. He’ll start as early as he can, and he’ll keep it all running until there are no more warriors or adversaries left.”
“I suppose that means it’s me,” Rodney said. He stood straight, but his face was pale.
“I don’t know,” Mara admitted. “There has been a lot of talk. The two favorites among the citizens are you,” she pointed at Ronon, “and you,” she indicated Teyla. “The two of you look like fighters, and that’s what they are all coming to see. No one wants to see a slaughter — at least not unless there’s been a good fight first.”
“But neither of them will be able to operate the weapons,” Rodney said.
“Saul doesn’t care. He’ll be counting on whatever skills you have in battle to make a good show, and if the weapons fail to work, that will only add to the amusement.”
Frustrated, Sheppard scrubbed a hand through his hair. “What can we do?”
“I don’t know,” Mara sighed. “But we can’t talk about it here. I don’t even think my quarters are safe. I have an idea, but we’ll need to get going now. If we can get in there before they realize we’re missing, I’ll see what we can find out.”
“Fair enough,” Sheppard said. He turned to the others. “I’ll be back for you, one way or the other. If we have to, we’ll fight our way out of here, but we’
re going to be at that gate before this place fries. Understood?”
They all nodded.
“Good,” Sheppard said. “I’ll try to be back before the first fight. If I’m not — delay in any way you can.”
Then, drawing Mara tight against his hip, he turned away and headed on around the last few cells, pretending to examine the night’s prospects.
Chapter Twenty-three
Almost as soon as Sheppard and Mara were out of sight, Saul returned to the circular chamber. He was accompanied by a small army of guards. He walked straight to the cell where the team was being held and pressed the button, opening it up so that only the energy beams contained the prisoners. He examined them for a long moment, and then began to speak.
“I wish we’d had time to run all of you through our training, but it can’t be helped. Gravity has put somewhat of a crimp in my ability to alter schedules, so I’m afraid the time has come,” he said. “If we are going to get through all the planned levels of the night’s grand entertainment, we have to start soon.”
He gazed at each of them in turn. “The only question that remains is, who shall I choose?”
Unable to contain a sudden burst of rage, Ronon charged at Saul. He struck the beams of force containing them with incredible force. The air crackled with energy, and he cried out. The force of the collision knocked him back, dazed, and he dropped to one knee, shaking his head, stunned.
“You really should save your energy for the arena,” Saul said drily. “All of you will get your chance.” He glanced down at Ronon. “You will be one of the last. There has been much speculation about you — a lot of money has changed hands.”
“Money?” Rodney spluttered. “Who cares about money? We’re all going to die!”
“As I would have expected from one so caught up in the science of things,” Saul said, “you have missed the point entirely.”
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