SGA-17 Legacy 2 - The Lost

by Graham, Jo

  Todd spread his hands. “What would you like me to say?”

  “We want to know who took Rodney,” Jennifer said. “We’re willing to make a deal for any information that will help us find him.”

  “I have no idea who took him,” Todd said. “It was not any of my doing.”

  Jennifer thought he sounded just a little too innocent. “You’re telling me that you don’t have any idea who attacked New Athos, or where they might be now?”

  Todd seemed to grow suddenly interested in inspecting the water pitcher. Jennifer waited, as patiently as she could. She didn’t think he’d be going to all this trouble if he thought there was no chance of making a deal.

  “There have been new developments,” Todd said finally. “Many of our territorial arrangements have broken down. We had placed New Athos off limits for the time being. If that is no longer being respected, it is beyond my control.”

  Ronon smiiled like he didn’t believe that at all. “Why would you do that?”

  “Maybe they don’t want to have to deal with us,” Jennifer said.

  Todd spread his hands. Ronon’s hand twitched at the motion, and Jennifer silently willed him to be still. He wasn’t making this any easier by acting like he was ready to start shooting at any moment. “New Athos is Lantean territory,” Todd said. “We felt it unwise to challenge you for it at present.”

  “It’s not our territory,” Ronon said. Jennifer could have kicked him. “But they’re our allies. You’re right that we’d come after you if you attacked them. We will, if you just did.”

  “We have no interest in New Athos,” Todd said. “The Athosians have been too recently culled. It would be poor husbandry for us to drive them to extinction through greed, though admittedly leaving the genes for certain — peculiar talents — in existence has its risks.”

  “You sound like an environmentalist talking about bears,” Jennifer said. Ronon shifted his weight again, and she shot Ronon a look that she hoped communicated this is not the time to ask me what an environmentalist is.

  “It is in our best interests to preserve our… environment,” Todd said. He looked amused. “Unless we intend to seek a new and unspoiled feeding ground.”

  “I think it would get spoiled pretty fast,” Jennifer said.

  “For you, at least,” Todd said.

  “Somebody sent those darts,” Ronon broke in. “It wasn’t a culling. They wanted one of our people.”

  “It looked to us like they were after Rodney in particular,” Jennifer said. “He’s got a lot of information that could be damaging to both of us.”

  “If that is the case, the queen who took him will be extracting the knowledge from him as we speak,” Todd said. “There is little chance that he can be retrieved before he reveals what he knows.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Jennifer said, fighting to keep her voice level. “Rodney’s tougher than he looks.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s already talked or not,” Ronon said, somewhat to her surprise. “He’s ours. We want him back.”

  “That is wasteful of you,” Todd said. He sounded less critical than thoughtful, his eyes on her speculatively.

  Jennifer raised her chin. “I think that’s our call.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “But if he has already revealed what he knows, I do not see that I have much incentive to become involved.”

  “Maybe we can give you one,” Jennifer said. “We’ve worked together in the past.”

  Todd snorted. “And we have seen what great advantage I have gained from that arrangement.”

  “You’re still alive,” she said. “We have information, technology — ”

  “None that is of interest to us.”

  “You used to find Dr. Beckett’s retrovirus pretty interesting.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Todd said sharply. “We learned that at our cost.”

  “It doesn’t work yet.”

  There was an abrupt mechanical noise, and she and Todd both glanced up at the other Wraith, who was looking at some kind of readout on a device he wore on his arm. The Wraith looked sharply at Todd, and for a moment she thought Todd’s eyes showed a flicker of alarm.

  Someone knocked on the door outside, and then opened it. “More gods have come through the ring,” Carlin said. Jennifer thought he was the only one in the room who looked pleased.

  Ronon gave him a sharp look. “How would you know that?”

  “There are transmitting devices in the gate field, well disguised,” Todd said when it was clear the man was planning to offer no explanation. “We may need to postpone any further discussion until they leave this place.”

  “No,” Ronon said. “You said we’d be safe here. Now you’re just jerking us around.”

  “Ronon,” Jennifer said.

  “I’ve been patient,” he said.

  “No, you haven’t,” she said. “If we need to wait — ”

  “Because they say so?”

  “Remain where you are,” Todd said, and strode out of the room. The other Wraith bared his teeth in a smile that didn’t look entirely confident. Jennifer didn’t feel up to meeting it with one of her own.

  “We should get out of here,” Ronon said.

  Jennifer turned up her hands. “It sounds like the other Wraith are between us and the gate.”

  “Like I told you.”

  “If Todd wanted us dead, we’d be dead by now,” Jennifer said. It seemed obvious enough to her. “He’d have had these people ambush us, or have set some kind of trap — ”

  “If that’s what you thought, then why did we come?”

  “Because I don’t think he wants us dead. There’s something he still wants badly enough to — ”

  “He’s a Wraith. He wants us dead.”

  “If you’re not even going to listen to me, why am I on this mission?”

  Ronon was smiling a little, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. “That was Woolsey’s idea, not mine.”

  That hung there for a moment, and then as Jennifer started to speak, the door slammed open.

  “Do not waste time in foolish questions,” Todd said. “Move quickly if you want to live. The Wraith who have come through the Stargate are followers of Queen Death. She must not know I have met with you.”

  “Why?” Jennifer asked.

  Todd glared at her. “That would be a foolish question.”

  “Fine,” Jennifer said. “What are you suggesting?”

  “There is a hiding place.”

  “If these people know about it, it’s not exactly going to do us much good.”

  “I have made arrangements,” Todd said. “You may trust me.”

  “Right,” Ronon said.

  “I don’t see that we have a lot of choice,” Jennifer said.

  “You’re right. We don’t,” Ronon said. He didn’t say and whose fault is that, but she was pretty sure he was thinking it.

  “Then let’s go,” Jennifer said, and shouldered her pack again. It seemed like it was getting heavier every time.

  Chapter Sixteen: Tomb

  Todd led them along the river, under the shelter of the trees, leaving the other Wraith behind, presumably to explain his absence if he didn’t get back before the other Wraith arrived. Ronon kept his pistol in hand, more than ready to shoot at any sign that they were being led into a trap. At this point, shooting Todd wouldn’t solve their problems, but it would at least make him feel better.

  “How much farther?” he demanded.

  “Far enough that you will not be heard even if you persist in talking,” Todd said.

  “I think we’re that far already.”

  Todd ignored him.

  “Ronon,” Jennifer said. He pretended he hadn’t heard.

  Finally Todd stopped, peering closely at the ground that led up from the river, and then began making his way carefully up the bank.

  “Where are we going?” Ronon asked.

  “The tombs along this side of the river are rarel
y visited,” Todd said. “They are too old for the humans here to believe that the dead in them will rise.”

  “Oh,” Jennifer said a little faintly. “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “They bring their dead here hoping that you’ll revive them,” Ronon said. “Only you don’t.”

  “Those who reside here consider themselves dead,” Todd said. “Those who serve us well may be rewarded.”

  “I’m guessing whoever’s in this tomb is not going to be doing that,” Jennifer said.

  “You are probably correct,” Todd said. He stopped in front of what looked to a casual glance like an undisturbed curve of hillside, but Ronon could see the depression in the grass around the edges of something with sides too straight to be a rock. He bent and dug his fingers in, finding an edge and tugging. A trap door lifted free with some effort, earth showering down into darkness.

  “There won’t be enough air in there,” Jennifer said.

  “There is an exhaust fan, and light as well,” Todd said. “I told you, I have made arrangements.”

  “For us?” Ronon said. “That’s considerate.”

  “In case of emergency,” Todd said.

  “I thought you said this was neutral ground,” Jennifer said. “According to ancient Wraith tradition.”

  “Times change,” Todd said. Now that he looked, Ronon could see wires running across the bottom of the wooden trap door. Todd pressed a button tangled in the wires, and a faint green glow lit what seemed to be a pit dug into the hillside, wide but not more than three or four meters deep. There were shapes in the dim light, but he couldn’t make them out clearly. They could have been anything.

  There was also a low whisper of noise that set Ronon’s teeth on edge. It might be a fan. It was probably mechanical. Not at all like the sound of something breathing in the darkness where nothing ought to be breathing. Not at all like the sound of something moving down there, whispering papery-dry against the walls —

  “This is not my idea of a great hiding place,” Jennifer said, but she was already clipping a line to her pack and fastening her flashlight to it. She lowered it down, peering down after it. “I don’t suppose there’s a ladder?”

  “There are hooks for one on the door,” Ronon said, pointing them out. “You can fasten the rope.”

  “My day really needed a little rope-climbing,” Jennifer said. She secured the rope with a better knot than he’d expected her to tie; it looked Athosian in style, so maybe Teyla had been trying to make up for some of the things Jennifer had apparently never learned in school.

  “I will return when the others have departed,” Todd said.

  Jennifer sat on the edge of the trap door and wrapped her hands inexpertly around the rope. He started to tell her to let him go down first, and then hesitated, because that would mean leaving her up here with a Wraith.

  Before he could tell her to do one or the other, she was already descending the short distance to the floor of the pit. She picked up the flashlight and shone it around her, adding its bright beam to the green glow. “It looks clear,” she said.

  “If this is a trick, I’ll kill you myself,” Ronon said.

  “If this were a trick, you would not get the chance,” Todd said. “Descend now, so that I can close this entrance behind you.”

  “I don’t take orders from Wraith,” Ronon said. It was intensely tempting to just pull the trigger. This wasn’t the first time someone had wanted to trust Todd, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time. He could put an end to all that right now. Jennifer couldn’t see him from down in the pit. He could kill the Wraith, see him fall twitching at his feet and watch him finally go still, and then he’d say —

  That was where it broke down. Jennifer might believe him if he said that Todd had drawn a weapon on him, but Sheppard would be skeptical enough to ask him outright if it was true. He’d have to lie, which would be wrong, or else have to admit he’d disobeyed orders and live with Sheppard’s disappointment. His hand was clenched on the pistol, his finger shaking with the effort not to squeeze the trigger.

  “One of these days I’m going to kill you,” Ronon said.

  “Not today,” Todd said. Ronon holstered his pistol in one fast move before he could think better of it and swung himself over the edge of the pit, dropping down to the floor without bothering to use the rope. It was cooler down there, and it smelled dank, although he could feel the air moving in a way that suggested they would be able to breathe.

  The trapdoor closed without warning, dirt raining down onto Ronon’s hair. He managed not to flinch, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing out sharply to avoid breathing the stuff.

  Jennifer shone the flashlight around, tracing the curve of the walls. Above them, the roof was reinforced by the same bleached tangle that had strengthened the longhouse roof. He thought some of it looked like the antlers of some herd animal, but some of it was clearly old bone, weathered in the open for some years.

  The green light was coming from a lantern set into one wall, its wires running up the wall to the trap door in the ceiling. At one end of the long pit, there was a raised platform of earth with a shape lying on it, wrapped in cloth. It didn’t move, no matter how long Jennifer shone her flashlight on it. That was a good thing.

  “All right,” Jennifer said, shining the light on a pile of rough wooden boxes at the other end of the pit. “What’s this stuff?”

  “Probably stuff he wanted buried with him,” Ronon said. “It sounds like he was planning on getting to use it later.”

  “Right,” Jennifer said. “This is creepy.” She climbed up on one of the boxes anyway, crossing her legs and leaning back against the earth wall. “You’re not going to pace like that the whole time we’re down here, are you?”

  “I don’t know. Are you going to talk the whole time?”

  “I don’t think anybody can hear us down here.”

  “I can hear you,” Ronon said.

  Jennifer actually looked like that stung. He’d wondered what it would take to get it through to her that he wasn’t happy with her.

  “Okay, we don’t have to talk,” Jennifer said. She wrapped her hands around her knees and switched off the flashlight. To conserve the battery, he told himself. Not just to get on his nerves.

  The green light threw weird shadows across her face, hollowing her cheeks and the backs of her hands. He didn’t really want to look at that, but there wasn’t much else to look at. Probably the stuff in the tomb said something meaningful about their culture. Teyla would have said they should take pictures for the scientists back in Atlantis, but Teyla was probably sitting in Radim’s office right now being really polite while drinking endless cups of tea.

  That was actually starting to sound pretty good.

  * * *

  The silence grew unbearable pretty fast. Staying quiet was made even harder by the fact that for the first time since they’d arrived on the planet, Jennifer felt like it was actually safe for them to talk. For the moment it looked like there wasn’t anyone watching them, at least assuming they weren’t being monitored by some hidden piece of Wraith technology. There wasn’t any way to tell, so she figured there was no point in worrying about that.

  This wasn’t how she’d wanted this mission to go. She’d hoped they could make some kind of deal quickly, and get back to Atlantis with a way to find Rodney. She’d also hoped that Ronon would back her up while she tried to make that happen. Instead he seemed determined to argue with her every step of the way.

  She couldn’t put off having it out about that any longer, not when they were going to have to work together when Todd returned. She wished she felt like she could. She would have much rather had this talk in her infirmary, surrounded by all the proofs of her own competence, not sitting here in somebody’s tomb.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I think we do have to talk.”

  “Fine,” Ronon said, after enough of a pause that she was pretty sure that wasn’t a conventional phrase on
Sateda for I’m about to say something you won’t like. He spread his hands. “Talk.”

  “You can’t just decide things like ‘we’re going back to the Stargate’ for both of us,” she said. “You can’t tell me we’re giving up on the mission and expect me to accept that without even talking about it first.”

  She could just barely see Ronon shrugging in the dim light, his face in shadow. “Sheppard’s not here,” Ronon said. “It’s my call.”

  “We’re supposed to be working together,” Jennifer said. “And maybe you don’t like the fact that I’m here, but I am here. It’s my mission, too, and if you aren’t willing to work with me, then you’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

  “You think I want to be here? We’re not getting anything useful, and we never were going to — ”

  “Then go!” Jennifer snapped. “If you want to try to get back to the Stargate, or whatever it is you think would be better than what we’re doing right now, then go. I’ll stay here and — ”

  “And wind up as dead as that guy?” Ronon jerked his head toward the wrapped corpse at the other end of the pit without looking at it. His whole body was tight with anger, his fingers twitching where they rested against the grip of his holstered pistol.

  That didn’t seem right. She could see that he was mad at her, but she didn’t think he wanted to shoot her. She flicked her flashlight back on so that she could see him more clearly. He was breathing too fast, and suddenly she wondered if they had adequate ventilation after all. Hypoxia would bring on shallow, rapid breathing, loss of coordination, diminished judgment.

  Her own breath was coming easily, though, and she felt fine. He didn’t look fine. If it hadn’t been Ronon, and if he hadn’t seemed fine up until now, she would have said he was terrified.

  She wouldn’t have gotten away with ‘seemed fine’ in her clinical training, some critical part of herself pointed out. He hadn’t complained. It was possible that he wouldn’t, no matter how he felt about having to be at close quarters with the Wraith. And after everything they’d done to him, she probably ought to figure that he wasn’t entirely fine about that.

  “We’re okay right now,” she said, shifting to the tone she used with her patients. “It’s probably pretty safe down here. There’s only one way in or out, and we’ll certainly notice somebody opening that door.”