STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air

by James Swallow

  “What?!” It took a lot for Young to break his cool, but it happened now. He was incredulous that Rush could do something so reckless, at exactly the moment the lives of every man and woman on the base were in dire jeopardy. He glared at the gate and saw glowing light in each illuminated chevron, then turned his gaze on Rush.

  “The attack has started a chain reaction in the planet’s core,” said the scientist, his words coming out in haste, “and there’s no stopping it.” He pointed at the open Stargate. “The effect will be catastrophic! The blast will easily translate through an open wormhole. It was too dangerous to dial Earth!”

  Young advanced to him, his anger building. “You could have dialed somewhere else. The Alpha Site, or Chulak, or Abydos. Anywhere else.” He was face to face with the other man.

  “This was our last chance,” insisted the scientist.

  “Shut it down!” he snarled.

  “We can’t,” said Rush. “It’s too late.”

  Riley nodded grimly from a nearby console. “The system’s not responding.”

  Young glared at the other man. “We need to get these people out of here.”

  “We have a way out,” said Rush.

  “We don’t know what’s on the other side!” he snapped back. “We can’t even get a MALP remote up here to go take a look!”

  Eli spoke up from behind him. “Can’t be worse than here, can it?”

  For a long second, Young wavered on the edge of knocking Rush on his ass, but this wasn’t the time or the place for that. The man’s arrogance was unbelievable, but it was too late to cry over it now, the damage was done. The colonel knew that severing the wormhole and trying to dial out again could be a death sentence for them all. It would take too long to cycle the whole process from the start, and Everett Young was not about to leave people behind.

  He turned to Riley. “Get these people prepped to go through.”

  The sergeant saluted. “Yes sir.”

  Young favored Rush with a hard, unflinching glare for a long moment, then turned and stalked away to where Greer was waiting by the doorway.

  The Marine held up a gear bag. “Colonel, I got the C-4 you wanted from the armory.”

  Young nodded. “Follow me.”

  It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but it felt like they had been digging for hours. The front of Scott’s uniform was gray with concrete dust and his hands were caked with grime. At his side, Chloe Armstrong was doing her best to help him, steadily and silently crying as she pulled at broken rocks. Her soft, well-manicured hands were now as filthy as his, and blood lined her fingers where her nails were shattered and bleeding.

  “Dad?” she cried out, and coughed from the haze in the corridor. “Can you hear me?”

  Scott paused, holding his breath and straining to listen for a reply. He thought he could hear a faint noise from the other side of the collapsed wall, but there was so much ambient sound, with the quake-rumbles and the distant hammer of gunfire, he couldn’t be sure. He started to wonder how long they could go before he had to call it quits and drag the girl out of there, kicking and screaming.

  “Chloe,” he began, trying to frame the words.

  “Stand clear,” called a voice, and he turned to see two figures emerging through the dust: Colonel Young and Sergeant Greer.

  “Heard you needed an assist, Lieutenant,” said Young.

  “Roger that,” nodded Scott. He gave Greer a look. “When did you get out?”

  Greer nodded at the colonel. “Early parole, sir.” He stepped in and Scott’s eyes widened as the Marine began to place a series of small explosive charges on the rubble.

  “That could bring the rest of the roof down,” said the lieutenant.

  “We don’t have the time to argue.” Young fixed Scott with an intense look. “I need you to lead the evacuees through the gate.” The colonel included Chloe. “Miss Armstrong, you need to go with him, too.”

  The girl shook her head. “I’m staying here until I know my father is okay.”

  Young didn’t press the point and turned back to the lieutenant. “Make sure that everyone carries as much of the expedition supplies as they can.”

  Scott gave him a questioning look. “Why?”

  “You’re not going to Earth. Rush dialed the ninth chevron.”

  The lieutenant couldn’t believe what he had just heard, but the grave cast of his commander’s face told him that this was the situation, and this was his part in it.

  “Go,” ordered Young, and Scott broke into a run.

  He made it to the gate room like the devil himself was chasing him, and perhaps that wasn’t too far from the reality of it. Scott found Riley loading up a train of civilians with practically everything that wasn’t nailed down, dividing up the gear from the storage spaces adjacent to this one, packs and hard-cases for every person.

  The lieutenant paused to scoop up a backpack for himself and dragged it on over his shoulders.

  “Hey,” said Eli, coming closer. “We’re really doing this, then?”

  “Guess so,” he replied, checking his assault rifle.

  Eli nodded at the gun. “You…think you’re gonna need that?”

  “Better to have it and not need it,” Scott said, punctuating his words with a snap of the weapon’s slide, “than to need it and not have it.”

  A large piece of rock detached itself from the ceiling and plummeted to the ground, smashing a light fixture as it fell. The sound and the flash set a ripple of fear fanning out through the assembled people — refugees now, Scott told himself — and he moved quickly to stamp on any fresh waves of panic. “Okay, I need everyone to listen to me.” He walked toward the Stargate. “Once I’m through, give it a count of three and then follow, one at a time.” He looked toward Riley. “Clear?” The sergeant nodded, and started marshalling the group behind him.

  Scott turned away and approached the event horizon. This wasn’t the first time he’d been through a Stargate. Okay, so he had never been part of an SG team, but he knew the feel of what was going to happen next. The cold kiss of the strange non-matter as you passed through the vertical pool. The peculiar, vertiginous head-rush as your body seemed to fade away for a brief moment, and then the rollercoaster ride boost out through space, off to some distant world.

  But what the hell am I walking into this time? he wondered. On the other side of that shimmering puddle of light was the unknown, something beyond human experience, uncharted and alien. Matthew Scott wasn’t the right man for this moment, this whole one small step. Telford and his team, they had been trained for this, they knew all the Ancient stuff, they were the first contact specialists and spec force operators.

  Only they weren’t here, and Scott was. He resisted the urge to throw a glance over his shoulder and set his jaw. Suddenly a memory bubbled up in his thoughts, something the old man had told him when he was still a boy, back before things had changed for the worse.

  You play the hand you’re dealt, Scott. That’s all anyone ever can.

  He took a breath and stepped through.

  Greer fixed the connector to the wired remote and then unspooled the cable, paying it out, back along the length of the corridor, around a corner. Chloe followed him, her expression leaden.

  Young watched them go. The Armstrong girl showed a lot of heart for someone he’d originally pegged as a society girl riding her father’s coattails, but then adversity did things like that to people. It either broke them apart or it broke them open, and let the strength they had inside come out. He just hoped that what she was wishing for was still there on the other side of the rocks. The colonel took a breath of the thick air and shouted into the rubble. “If you can hear me, stand back! We’re going to blow the obstruction!”

  The warning delivered, he jogged back around the corner to where Greer and Chloe were crouching behind some cover. The sergeant handed him the live trigger, and Young called out the instant before he flipped the firing switch. “Fire in the hole!” />
  A split-second later the C-4 blew, sending a rolling torrent of fresh dust and powdered concrete churning away over their heads. Young held his breath, afraid that the next sound he would hear would be the rumble of the ceiling collapsing, but Greer had proven his worth once more, planting the charges in just the right places.

  He followed the Marine back to where the rubble had stood. A hole big enough to crawl through had appeared, and Greer was already pushing loose stone out of the way as the first person pushed through. Chloe stepped up to help him, offering her hands to a dust-covered woman in a lab coat, who stumbled past Young, clutching a pair of spectacles with shattered lenses.

  “Move it!” Greer was calling out. “Come on, let’s go!”

  Young pointed down the corridor. “You heard him, that way. Get to the gate.”

  As the woman ran on, the base took another hit that lingered for long seconds, shaking the walls and threatening to undo the work of the breaching charges. Young looked up at the ceiling; the noise sounded like the peak was being torn from the top of the mountain, and for all he knew, it could have been just that. If Rush was right, the attack and maybe Icarus’s tap into the core, to boot, had pushed this fragile world past the point of no return.

  The people coming through the hole slowed to nothing, and Greer gave his commander a look. Young reached out for Chloe’s shoulder, but the girl’s attention was elsewhere. “Dad?”

  One more figure pushed through, a man in a suit that had once been quite fine but now looked like it had been dragged through a quarry with him still in it. “I’m all right,” said Armstrong, his face splitting in a grin at seeing his daughter again. “I was the last. There’s no one else.”

  Chloe took the senator’s weight and helped him away. Greer followed, and paused as he realized that the colonel wasn’t with him.

  “I’m right behind you,” Young called after him. “Keep going.”

  He reached for his radio, and for the last time he toggled the channel to the general guard frequency. “Hammond, this is Young!” His answer was nothing but static. “Hammond, come in!”

  No response. He hoped that meant Colonel Carter had lit the fires and taken the ship out of orbit, and not the more troubling option. At least he could hope that some of his people would make it back home. He wondered if Telford was among them; Boy, is he gonna be pissed that I got to make this trip instead of him.

  Tamara Johansen glanced around and felt the panic rising from the people around her, the fear in them rolling forward like a tidal swell. The thunderous quakes went on and on, ceaseless now, the terrible sound of them blurring together into one unending chorus. She saw Rush move forward and pass through the event horizon of the Stargate, but no sooner was he through than a fresh crashing salvo of explosions blew the self-control of the evacuees and they all pressed at once.

  “Don’t push!” she shouted. “Stay calm!”

  No-one listened, and her every attempt at holding on to some kind of order crumbled. The crowed surged, funneling toward the open gate.

  She heard a voice over her radio, distorted and laced with strange interference. “This is Scott, I need you to slow down the evac! Everyone’s coming in too hot, we can’t handle them!”

  Tamara tried to reach her walkie to respond, but it was too late. She was already being swamped by the crush of people, and fighting the motion of them would only get her trampled. She felt herself dragged toward the Stargate, and the last sight she had of Icarus Base was of Colonel Young racing into the gate room.

  Young saw the chaos at the mouth of the gate and shouted at the top of his lungs, snarling at the evacuees to get through as quickly as they could. The gate room — and Icarus itself — was coming apart as chunks of concrete and rebar fell from the ceiling, smashing through gantries where they landed. Control panels sparked and dimmed as power began to die off through the base’s crippled systems, and the colonel knew that the death knell was only seconds away.

  Greer was almost at the event horizon, supporting an injured civilian with his free hand. He caught sight of his commander and called out. “Sir!”

  Young stabbed a finger toward the Stargate. “Go!” he shouted, and reluctantly the Marine obeyed.

  Dozens of supply cases and backpacks were scattered across the floor, left behind by the fleeing evacuees, some too heavy to carry, others broken open with their contents scattered. He looked up to see the last few people passing through the gate, and Young halted, instead turning to the crates and starting a frantic search.

  Another shuddering explosion brought gusts of burning hot air with it, and he tasted the sulphurous stink of searing chemical fumes. The vibrations were so strong now he could barely stay on his feet, and the lights overhead began to blow out one by one. The Stargate itself rattled in its restraints and threw great lightning-streaks of energy out across the walls.

  One more container. He tore open the lid and his eyes immediately found what he had been searching for: a slim, nondescript silver case. A coded locking mechanism secured its single latch. With his rifle still in his other hand, Young threw himself up on to the gate gantry and ran full tilt toward the event horizon. It loomed ahead of him, wreathed in energetic discharges, shaking so hard it seemed to be trying to break free and escape.

  Young was less than an arm’s length from it when a burning wall of flame and smoke slammed into him from behind, ripping him off his feet and spinning him through the air. The fireball ripped the breath from his lungs and pitched him over into the disc of silver, the surface of it tinted crimson with the reflections of a planet wide inferno.

  On the parched, rocky surface of P4X-351, a massive bloom of thermal energy erupted like a towering volcano as the churning mass of volatile naquadria went supercritical. The first shockwave event blasted up through the channels cut into the fissures of the planetary crust, seeking the path of least resistance. Icarus Base, like its namesake, was touched by fire and destroyed. In seconds, magma flows under intense pressure tore through the sublevels of the facility, melting rock, turning steel and glass instantly to gas. The eruption discharged into the sky, ripping open the mountain that had housed the base, sending a fountain of smoke and fire miles into the air. The enemy ground troops died instantly, killed by the sheer overpressure of the mountain’s destruction.

  And still the fireball grew, as the planet’s core went mad, turning itself inside out, energy flashing over as it shattered the cowl of rock and air surrounding it. The shockwave crossed the landscape, searing everything it touched, blazing everything into ashes and fragments in its inferno. The blast fractured the atmosphere, tearing it away, the pillar of fire growing into orbital space.

  The trio of Ha’tak motherships had drawn close to the planet, preparing to lock on to the portable ring transporter terminals the transport crew had set up. They were too near to escape, even as their helmsmen tried to make for open space. The blast wave reached up and swatted them from the sky, smashing the pyramid ships into pieces that collided and crackled with spilled energy.

  The death-throes of P4X-351 turned the planet into a brief, glittering sun as it ate out its own heart, before crumbling into a storm of radioactive dust.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was the silences that were the worst. They were what hit him hardest, just the simple absence of speaking, and she knew that. She knew how much it bothered him. He never really talked that much, not anywhere near as much as Emily did, and that was how Everett liked it. He loved to hear the sound of her voice, not his own, always had. He could listen to her reading out the phone book and it would make him relax, make him smile; so when she went silent, it was like a light going out of the world.

  She collected the dishes from the dinner table and carried them into the kitchen. Emily couldn’t manage them all in one trip, though, so he picked up the rest, the glasses and all, and brought those to her while she started sorting them.

  She didn’t speak. Her mouth was in a thin, flat line, eyes not meet
ing his. She might have even cried if he hadn’t been in the room with her. And finally, when he couldn’t stand the silence any more, he spoke again, repeating himself.

  “It’s just one more year.”

  “It’s always just one more year,” she said, old reproach strong in her words.

  “Well, this time it is.” It sounded weak coming from him.

  “There’s always important work that needs to be done,” she went on. “By you.”

  He sighed. “It’s a command. A good posting.”

  “Where?” Emily loaded the dishwasher and closed it with an air of finality.

  “It’s classified.” She started to sigh, and he pressed on. “It’s a lot safer than other places I’ve been assigned to—”

  She looked up at him. “That’s not the point. You’ve put in your time, Everett.”

  He nodded. His throat felt dry, and it suddenly seemed hot in the kitchen, hot and dust-dry. “And when this tour is over, I promise you—”

  Emily didn’t let him finish. “You know what? Never mind. Don’t bother promising anything. You always end up choosing to be somewhere other than here.”

  He reached for his collar, pulling at it. He could feel an odd, distant heat on his back. He had the sudden sense of fire and dizziness at the edge of his thoughts and he pushed it away. “I am not choosing my job over you!” he insisted, feeling light-headed. “I… I don’t know how you can even say that.”

  His wife looked away. “I love you. I do. But I can’t wait anymore.”

  “Emily—” He took a step toward her and his legs turned to water. He stumbled, the strength ebbing from him. He reached out, bracing himself on the counter. Sweat blossomed on his forehead, streaming into his eyes. The heat was at his back, all over him, engulfing him.

  “Everett, are you okay?” Her voice, her beautiful voice, began to echo and distort. Her face became a blur, the kitchen with it. “Everett?”