by Graham, Jo
She expected John to argue. Perhaps once he might have. Perhaps his respect for Woolsey had increased. Or perhaps he was also so tired that it seemed that the briefing room swam gently before his eyes.
“You’ve done your part,” Woolsey said quietly. “Let me do mine. When we hear anything I’ll call you.”
John nodded slowly. “Ok. Ronon, Teyla, get some rest. You too, Radek. That was a good job out there.”
“Thank you,” Radek said. He sounded vaguely surprised.
“We’re standing down,” he said. “This isn’t going to be over in a couple of days. Let’s get some rest.”
Woolsey got to his feet and went to the door. “Banks, get me a radio link and open the gate for me. I need a line out to Ladon Radim.”
* * *
Ronon headed for his quarters, brushing past people without speaking. They would have questions, want to know if they’d found Rodney yet, and he was too tired for any more words. He’d end up stumbling over them the way Zelenka had stumbled on the gateroom steps, the way when he had first come to Atlantis it had been an effort to remember how to talk to anyone.
The halls were still too crowded with all new people who were still being herded through trainings and were free at weird hours rather than busy with work all day. There were too many people he didn’t know, and too many people he did, scientists who didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves without Rodney around. It wasn’t like they didn’t have work to do, but they kept gathering in little knots in the corridors and the mess hall, repeating the obvious as if that would somehow help.
He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t much want to sleep, but it was probably true that they should sleep while they could. Every instinct was telling him to keep moving, that doing anything would be better than doing nothing, and instead they were sitting around waiting to find out if their allies — such as they were — were going to talk to them. It rankled, and there wasn’t anything to do about that either.
It would help if he could stop running over the fight on New Athos in his head, with every wrong move clear to him now. His last shot had been off, clipped the Dart’s stabilizers instead of crippling its wing, and even the one that had told best hadn’t brought the Dart down. Even if the Dart carrying Rodney had gotten away, if they’d had a prisoner to interrogate, they could have found out a lot that would help them now.
If they’d seen the trap sooner, they could have all taken cover, tried to take out the Darts from the shelter of the trees. If he’d seen the pattern in the dives sooner, seen that the Darts had a single target, he would have gotten Rodney to shelter, left him there and come back to fight. Or at least have stuck close, close enough to dive into the culling beam when it took Rodney.
They’d escaped a hive ship before. And, all right, neither of them could fly a Dart, but they’d have figured something out. The Wraith wouldn’t have killed them right off, not if they were after information. Ronon would have gotten Rodney free, and then Rodney would have figured out a way off the hive ship, and then they wouldn’t be searching empty planets and coming up with nothing.
He could still remember how much he’d wanted to kill Rodney himself if Rodney didn’t shut up, that first time they’d been captured together. It wasn’t like he liked being trapped in Wraith webbing so that he couldn’t move, struggling for every finger’s-width that he could move his hand toward his knife, for every deep breath. He didn’t see how it could possibly help to give voice to every terrified thought in your head while you waited.
It had still been better than being alone. Better than waking up in a cell, or cocooned in the long rows of people who were going to be somebody’s next meal, and knowing that there was no one to help you. He was trying not to think about that now, but it wasn’t working very well.
If he’d stuck close, the way he would have back in the days when Rodney couldn’t yet be trusted to hold his own in a fight — but John had said spread out, and there were too few of them to lay down a crossfire otherwise. And Rodney had done everything right, shot straight and true, dodged when he should have. He’d never had a chance to see the second Dart coming in.
No one had seen it in time. They should have done better. For that matter, they should have left men at the gate, or waited at the gate ready for the trap, but John had been convinced it was a trick, children playing games.
He’d heard the distress call played back, and seen Teyla’s face when she heard it. It hadn’t sounded like a boy playing the kind of game he ought to be beaten for. It had sounded like raw panic. A man in fear for his life, or a good actor, a good liar. An agent of the Genii, or a Wraith worshipper.
Ronon had thought it at the time, but he hadn’t said it. It was New Athos, the fields heavy with grain and sleepy in the hot sun, children playing the same games they’d all watched a hundred times. They’d all wanted to believe it was a safe place, the kind of place where a strange call for help was probably just another children’s game.
They’d all spent too long on Earth. He’d still run every morning, sparred with whoever was around when John and Teyla had both been too absorbed in worrying about the future to spend much time in the gym, but it wasn’t enough to keep from getting into the habits of safety. Five months idle was too long to go straight back to the field without time to retrain, to get their edge back.
That apparently wasn’t how John’s military did things. He wasn’t going to argue, but either it was getting to them, or they’d just screwed up with no excuse. They couldn’t afford any more mistakes like that. And now they didn’t even have their scientist to help them figure out what to do next. If Rodney were here, he’d figure out some solution, some way to find whoever they’d lost.
He’d keep working until he found some solution, complaining the whole time, which was all that they could do now. Without the complaining part, which he still didn’t think helped. They’d get information from somebody, and then they’d go get Rodney back and kill the Wraith who took him. They’d make this right.
His mind was on New Athos, not on where he was going, and he nearly ran into someone as she stepped into his path. He was ready to shoulder her aside and keep moving until he saw it was Jennifer. She didn’t ask him anything, just looked up at him with eyes that made her question clear enough.
He shook his head, and then realized she might take that to mean they’d had bad news. Worse news than none. “We don’t know,” he said.
She nodded, her chin up. “Just let me know if you hear anything.”
“Woolsey thinks he can talk to people,” Ronon began, but he really didn’t have the words. “We’re going to find him.”
“I know,” Jennifer said. She nodded and walked on, back straight.
Now he didn’t feel like sleeping at all, but he knew it was time to sleep while they could. He knew the difference between a sprint and long days of running. He could see well enough that was what they were in for.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
* * *
Radek had barely set foot in the infirmary before he was brought up short by Jennifer’s weary “And what happened to you? Slipped on the stairs? Frostbite?” She was cleaning up what he thought looked like the preparations for putting on a cast. He wondered who had broken what.
“Neither,” he said. “I don’t think it is actually cold enough for frostbite.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jennifer said. “You’d think no one had ever seen it snow before.” It was true that the outdoor stairs and walkways were slippery that morning, and metal railings cold, but Radek had sensibly enough changed his usual shoes for the military-issue boots he rarely wore, and also put on gloves when he went outside. Apparently some had not, and were regretting it.
“I have seen my share of snow,” Radek said. “I am from the mountains, you know.”
She nodded absently. “I’m from Wisconsin. Where it snows. But I think everybody got used to living on a nice warm island.”
“And we
are all simply going to have to learn to cope with living on a colder one. The energy consumption that would be required to keep the shield up every time it is snowing…” He was getting a little tired of this explanation. Perhaps it would help if he sent a memo. “It is prohibitive.”
Jennifer shook her head. “I’m not asking you to put up the shield so that it won’t snow.”
There was a momentary pause. “Then…”
“Why are you in here? That was actually my question.”
It took a moment. There had not been much sleep for anyone in the last few days, which might have something to do with a tendency to fall down icy stairs. “I came to see if you were all right,” he said simply.
There was still hope, of course. They had lost people to the Wraith before and recovered them again after it had seemed that all hope was lost. But it did not look good, and he thought it might be the first time that it was personal for her. She and Rodney had been seeing each other for months, had been sharing living quarters since they returned to Atlantis, and now he was gone, and it might end just like that, quick and sudden like a candle being blown out.
Jennifer’s expression was more awkward than anything else, as if trying to remember how one responded to such remarks. For a moment she reminded him oddly of Colonel Sheppard. “I’m good,” she said. “I mean, as much as possible, considering that we’re kind of in a holding pattern right now.”
“We must be patient,” Radek said. “But it is frustrating.”
“It’s probably best to just get on with everything else,” Jennifer said, looking up as one of the Marines entered the infirmary with a sheepish expression and a pronounced limp. “It’s not going to do any good to fall apart until, you know, we’re there.”
“I hope we will not be there,” Radek said, but he could recognize a request to be left alone when he heard one. They were hardly close, and he was sure he was not her first choice for a sympathetic ear. It was only that he suspected she might not have one, and at a time like this, sometimes anyone would do to tell about one’s troubles.
No, not only that. What he wanted to say was: The first year, when Peter Grodin was killed, it was hard for me to take, and I said nothing about it because everyone was unhappy, what else was new? And Rodney, who had been his friend, tried awkwardly to say something comforting, although it came out more ‘when you think about it, we’re probably all going to die,’ and I told him to please be quiet so we could get on with work. And now I am sorry I did, because Rodney is terrible at such things, but he tried instead of saying nothing, and to say nothing would have been so easy.
Jennifer was already crossing the infirmary to greet her new patient, though, and maybe there really was nothing more to say. Radek left her to her examination and ducked out of the infirmary. He nearly ran into Major Lorne, who looked distinctly troubled. That in itself was probably not a surprise.
“Hey, doc, have you got a minute?”
“Not really, but tell me your problems,” Radek said. “I will add them to the list.”
“The short-range scanners keep cutting in and out,” Lorne said. “And when they’re in, we’re getting some weird readings off them. I don’t think it’s really likely that we’ve got company here, but back on Lantea there was that business with the whales — ”
“There could be whales here,” Radek said. “Dangerous space whales intent on battering themselves against the city suicidally, or possibly on eating military personnel. I would not at all be surprised.”
“I’m just saying it would be nice to check it out,” Lorne said. “I don’t really want to be on a new planet with scanners that don’t work.”
“I see that,” Radek said. “It is possible that the weather is causing some problems. The city was surely once equipped to handle cold and snow in Antarctica, but that was literally thousands of years ago, and it may be that given Lantea’s milder climate, keeping those systems working was not a priority.”
“But now maybe we might want to rethink that. I’ve also been noticing that it’s a little cold in here.”
“People keep opening and closing the exterior doors,” Radek said. “You see, without the shield, we have no control over exterior temperatures, and while the city’s heating system is very good, we cannot heat the entire outdoors.”
“My mom used to say that,” Lorne said. “Maybe you could send a memo.”
“Yes, that will be sure to help.” Radek spread his hands in surrender to the uselessness of attempting to teach all Atlantis personnel to keep doors closed. “I will add it to the list, but at the moment we have worse problems to deal with.”
“I know,” Lorne said, all humor gone. “Believe me.”
* * *
Teyla came into the gateroom twelve hours later, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands. Sleep and food had made her feel human again, capable of taking up the search for Rodney with competence.
Radek was there ahead of her, frowning into one of the monitors, his glasses askew. His hair was still wet, so he had not been there long. His usual travel mug of coffee was beside him.
Teyla came and stood beside him, looking over his shoulder at the screen filled with incomprehensible code. “What are you doing?”
“Locking Rodney out,” he said. “Which is pretty much an impossible task.”
“I don’t understand.”
Radek spread his hands, flexing fingers above the keyboard and reached for his coffee. “Rodney is in the hands of the Wraith. Rodney has access codes to every one of Atlantis’ systems, from power to the shield to the gate codes to the requisition order forms for Earth! He has the codes for the auto-destruct system. He has the codes to drop the shield on the gate. So I am changing everything.”
“Rodney would not tell…” Teyla began, and stopped. Of course he would tell. He would have to. She had touched the mind of the Wraith far too often not to understand what it was like, what a Queen’s telepathy was capable of. The first time, she had folded like bent paper. When faced with a great queen, the one they had discovered aboard the lost power station beneath the sea, John had crumpled in seconds. Taken by surprise, she had crumpled as well.
But later, knowing and expecting the strength of the mind that wrestled with her own, she had won.
Coldamber, Todd had named her, the queen Teyla defeated. Coldamber, he had said, with a kind of wonder in his voice, and through the corners of his mind she had seen what he remembered, Coldamber in her beauty and pride, while Todd fell to his knees before her in homage, as helpless as John. She had seen his wonder that she, Teyla Emmagan, had defeated Coldamber.
This was the Gift, the remnant of a long-ago medical experiment when a renegade Wraith scientist had combined his own DNA with that of captive humans. Some few of them had survived. Some few of them were her ancestors. Among her foremothers stood a Wraith Queen, the mother of the scientist who had done this, and from that tainted blood sprung her Gift. She was strong enough now, strong enough with Todd’s tutelage, that she thought she could face a Wraith Queen and give away nothing.
But Rodney had none of her defenses. He had none of the protection offered by her tainted blood, by the strand of Wraith DNA among her own. His mind would be open to a queen, as surely as the mind of a captive Wraith could be opened to her. She had not tried that. She hoped she would not need to, and yet she held it in reserve, a hidden dagger that no one had as yet realized she carried.
None but Todd. He had opened his mind to her willingly during her charade aboard his hiveship to teach and counsel. But he had been aware, before the end, that if he did not give she could take. It was a curious kind of power, and one that sickened her as much as it pleased her.
Radek mistook her hesitation for disapproval. “I must do it,” he said. “I will let Rodney back in when we get him back, but I cannot leave the codes as they are.”
“No, of course you cannot,” Teyla said. “It would be much too dangerous.”
Radek ran his hand through his damp hair
. “As it is I make no guarantees. Rodney has backdoors for everything. I have found a few of them, but I know there are many more.” He shook his head. “After the time the Replicators took over the city, Rodney swore he’d never be locked out. He would always have a way to get back in. I do not know what they are. And as many as I find, we will never be certain that we have them all.” He looked at her and shrugged self-depreciatingly. “Not to mention that he is a genius. I say that without him standing here. He knows my code, knows my style. I do not think I can build something he cannot hack.”
“We will get him back,” Teyla said, her voice filled with a certainty she did not feel.
“If Rodney gives over to the Wraith what he knows, we cannot stand against them,” Radek said.
Chapter Three: Quicksilver
The third time Quicksilver woke he felt stronger. The data reader lay on the bed beside him, just as he had put it by before he slept. It had been hard to read. He’d had to make an effort, like a child who has not learned properly, and sleep had overtaken him before long. Now he felt better, as though clarity was returning.
Yet he remembered nothing of what had happened to him. A prisoner of the Lanteans, Dust had said. When he closed his eyes he could find a vague impression of towers that stretched against the sky, of a control room with windows of colored glass. Before that nothing. Why could he could not remember Dust, nor this, his home?
He was Quicksilver, one of the foremost of the Queen’s Clevermen. These were his rooms aboard the shipworld Bright Venture, large and private rooms as befitted a cleverman of his stature. He had a laboratory as well and eager assistants. Trouble had come to him, but surely he had risen above much in his life. This illness and the mistreatment that had preceded it were only one more thing. In time it would all be behind him.
