SGA-17 Legacy 2 - The Lost

Home > Other > SGA-17 Legacy 2 - The Lost > Page 18
SGA-17 Legacy 2 - The Lost Page 18

by Graham, Jo


  “Or we could try to get back to the Stargate.”

  “If we’re lucky, that’s where the other Wraith just went,” Ronon said. “If we’re not, they’re between us and the Stargate, and I can’t see to shoot.”

  Jennifer retrieved her own pistol from where it lay on the grass, and collected the Wraith worshipper’s weapon as well, shoving it into her pack.

  Ronon was undoing the knot around his wrist. “Pack up the rope, too,” he said. “And what’s left of the stun grenade. No point in leaving evidence we were here.”

  “It’s still hot,” Jennifer said.

  “We’ve got a minute. I hope. If we don’t, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jennifer said. “I couldn’t think of any other way to — ”

  To her surprise, Ronon grinned. “You did good,” he said, standing up and drawing his pistol. “Do you see a whole bunch of Wraith running toward us, or are we all right for the moment?” He actually sounded like he was happier than he’d been the entire rest of the mission.

  “All right for the moment,” Jennifer said, and then she did catch sight of movement in the trees ahead of her, from the same direction they’d come. “Somebody’s there,” she said.

  “Great.”

  “Can you see anything yet?”

  “Not a whole lot,” Ronon said. He was still smiling. “So this could get interesting.”

  “We could run for it,” she said, and then, “Wait — that’s Todd.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said, but she didn’t lower her pistol.

  “I told you to hide,” Todd said sharply when he came in sight. He looked down at the woman’s body and then at them as if at children who’d broken something fragile that he’d unwisely left in their reach. Not something precious and irreplaceable, but something that had made a loud noise and left a mess. Can’t I leave you alone for a minute? she remembered her mother saying.

  “That was when we weren’t being attacked by crazy Wraith worshippers,” Ronon said.

  “Do the other Wraith know we’re here?” Jennifer asked, since that seemed to be the more pressing question.

  “They had already left to make their way back to the Stargate,” Todd said. “If we are lucky, they did not hear you.”

  “She said Death would reward her if she handed us over,” Jennifer said. “Whatever arrangements you made with these people, I don’t think they worked so well.”

  “This one is the sister of Carlin,” Todd said. “He swore she was trustworthy, for a human. He seems to have been mistaken.”

  “You think?” Ronon said. Jennifer couldn’t really blame him.

  “He will regret it. He had hoped I would reward him.”

  Jennifer really hoped they weren’t around to watch Todd tell Carlin he wasn’t going to ‘reward him’. She expected that wouldn’t be pretty, and she really didn’t want to make Ronon watch the man beg for the Wraith’s healing touch. She couldn’t help glancing down at the dead woman, thinking, now that their lives weren’t in danger, of how desperate she must have been. “Can you heal her?” she asked.

  Todd gave her a sharp look. “Why would I do that? She has already betrayed me. If you wished her alive, you should not have killed her.”

  “If we hadn’t killed her, would you have left her alive?” Ronon said.

  “No,” Todd said. “I will take you back to the Stargate as soon as the others have passed through. You have been a great deal of trouble to me.”

  “Why were Queen Death’s people here?” Jennifer said. “What did she want to talk to you about?”

  “She has taken a prize,” Todd said after a moment’s hesitation. “A prize belonging to the Lanteans, which she believes will be of great use to her and her loyal followers.” He didn’t sound like he much liked the idea of being one of them.

  Jennifer tried to keep her voice steady. “What kind of prize?”

  “I have my suspicions,” Todd said. “As do you.”

  Ronon was staying quiet this time, letting her play her cards. Either that or he was just feeling worse than he let on, although she thought his vision was improving. His eyes were starting to track Todd as he moved. “If she has Rodney, and you can help us get him back — ”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “What if she does learn everything Rodney knows?” Jennifer said. “Not just a handful of codes. She could have that by now if she wanted, but it sounds like she’s planning to keep him until she gets everything from him.” She suppressed her fierce surge of joy at that. As long as Rodney’s captors still had a use for him, there was still hope. “The retrovirus that destroyed your entire hive. How to program nanites to take over people’s brains. Everything he knows about jamming your shield technology and infiltrating your computer systems — ”

  “You have made your point,” Todd said. “It is still an unacceptable risk. She already does not trust me, and if there are humans here who serve her personally, they may tell her things that will inspire more distrust.”

  “That’s too bad,” Ronon said, with an unfriendly smile.

  “If I betray her position, I will be under suspicion at once.”

  “So tell her you know who actually betrayed her,” Jennifer said. “The Genii have spies all over the galaxy. Tell her they’ve infiltrated her supposedly loyal Wraith worshippers. Blame them for telling us where her hive ship was going to be.”

  “It will still be a risk,” Todd said after a moment.

  “All we need is information about where her ship is going,” Jennifer said. “That’s got to be worth it to you.”

  “It would be better for me if McKay were killed,” Todd said.

  “But we aren’t going to do that. And if you try it yourself, then you’re really taking a risk.”

  “And then we’d have to kill you,” Ronon said.

  “It will take me some time to gather the information you require,” Todd said.

  “The longer it takes, the more she’s finding out from Rodney,” Jennifer said.

  Todd’s hands clenched. “I am aware of that.” It occurred to her for the first time that he might find this whole situation frustrating too.

  “We’ll keep checking in with you,” Jennifer said. “As soon as you find out where they are, we’ll be ready to move.”

  “I do not suggest you remain here in the mean time,” Todd said.

  “We’d rather not,” Ronon said.

  Todd looked him up and down in what looked like amusement. “You seem somewhat damaged,” he said. “That could be remedied.”

  “Touch me and I’ll kill you.”

  Jennifer wished it seemed like a good idea to stop and take something for her worsening headache. “Let’s just all take a nice walk back to the Stargate now.”

  Chapter Twenty-two: Duty

  Eva Robinson was still in the control room when Colonel Sheppard came in escorting a blond woman in her thirties who looked none too happy to be escorted. Though he didn’t touch her, her body language was stiff and her angry stride and clenched jaw spoke volumes. Sheppard, for his part, sported a heavy growth of beard, and sand had caked and dried in his graying hair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he moved with wary tension, like a man who needs to be given a wide berth.

  Dr. Zelenka did not hesitate to approach him. “How is Carson?” he asked.

  “He tore up his arm pretty bad, but he and Teyla are both on their way to the infirmary,” Sheppard said in a low voice.

  Zelenka frowned. “What happened to Teyla?”

  “She hurt her hip. Might have broken something.”

  Sheppard was interrupted by Mr. Woolsey coming out of his office, his right hand extended. “Miss Radim! It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to Atlantis.”

  “It would be more of a pleasure if your intentions were not so perfidious,” the woman replied. “This blatant disregard for our alliance will not be tolerated by the Genii. This warship…”

&nb
sp; “Perhaps you will join me in my office,” Woolsey said smoothly, with a glance at Colonel Sheppard. “And we can get to the bottom of this. I assure you that we value our alliance with the Genii greatly.” His eyes fell on Airman Salawi at the near board. “Airman, will you arrange for a courtesy tray? Right this way, Miss Radim.”

  The woman preceded him into the office, followed by Sheppard. The door hissed shut behind them.

  “What’s a courtesy tray?” Airman Salawi appealed to Zelenka.

  At the other end of the terminals Banks stood up. “It’s a tea and coffee service with some light snacks. You call it down to Sergeant Pollard or whoever’s in the kitchen and then run down and get it. It’s a thing they do when they have important visitors. I’ll show you.”

  “Thanks,” Salawi said, going down to join her.

  Zelenka looked worriedly toward the office door, where behind the glass Sheppard and the woman were taking seats in Woolsey’s visitors chairs.

  “Who is she?” Eva asked him.

  “She is Chief Scientist Dahlia Radim,” Zelenka said. “She’s a Genii engineer, and also happens to be the sister of their head of state. And she does not look happy.”

  “Perhaps this mission didn’t go well,” Eva said.

  Zelenka gave her a rather penetrating gaze over the top of his glasses. “You think not? Two people injured out of the team of three we sent, and Colonel Sheppard looking like something the cat dragged in? An unexpected Ancient warship almost crashed on our doorstep, and never a word about the information they went to get? And the Genii furious?”

  “I thought the Genii were our allies,” Eva said, dredging the memory out of the reams of briefings she’d read in the past few weeks.

  “That is the present theory, yes.” Zelenka pushed his glasses back up on his nose.

  “Two people injured,” Eva said slowly, seeing again the way Sheppard had stopped and dropped his voice to talk to Zelenka. “That’s not good.”

  “No, it is not.” Zelenka went around her to examine something on the board behind her, looked up at her swiftly. “They are friends, both of them. Close friends. Teyla and Carson both. We have been here more than five years together. We are like family. I watch Teyla’s son for her. For Carson I was a pallbearer. I would be off down to the infirmary now to see how they are, but…” He spread his hands, gesturing to the control room and the Stargate beyond. “I am on duty. I have the watch, and you have seen how fast things can happen around here.”

  Eva grabbed at the thing she thought she must have misunderstood. “A pallbearer?”

  A flash of a smile illuminated his face. “It is a long story. I do not have time for that one just now, but I will tell you another time.”

  “Ok,” Eva said. “I’d like to hear it.”

  Everyone in the control room was trying not to stare at the windows of Woolsey’s office, stealing occasional glances, passing the word to others or speaking quietly into headsets. By now half the city would know who was injured and who was here. Nothing ran as quickly as gossip in a small world where everyone mattered to one another. A unique community, she thought, like the seed of something entirely new.

  At the SGC she had never forgotten that she was in a real place. Yes, it was a little strange going to work in Cheyenne Mountain, knowing that there was a gate to other worlds a few floors away, talking to people who went back and forth through space like it was nothing. But at the end of the day you got in your car and you drove home. You were in Colorado, in an ordinary American city, a not very famous or interesting city where people went to the dentist and had baby showers and visited their Aunt Erma in the assisted living place out on the interstate.

  Atlantis was something entirely different.

  Eva looked through the window, frowning. Sheppard moved stiffly in his chair, as though everything hurt. The scientist, Dahlia Radim, was talking, anger evident in every gesture. Woolsey was placating. His bland attentive expression was exactly what one is supposed to learn to convey neutral interest. He had been to school, that one. He knew all the tricks. But this had to count as the management school of hard knocks.

  Airman Salawi came up the steps with a tray, coffee and hot water and tea bags and a plate of little cookies looking like they’d just been taken out of a box. “Should I just go in?” she asked Zelenka.

  “Knock at the door and Mr. Woolsey will motion you in if it is appropriate,” he said. “He can see you. Don’t be nervous.”

  Salawi gave him a big smile. “Thanks, doc. You’re swell.” She walked over to the office door, balancing the tray carefully.

  Zelenka shook his head. “Kids today. Do they say swell again? It sounds to me like something out of an Andy Hardy movie.”

  “I guess they do,” Eva said. She glanced at Salawi, who had been beckoned inside and was trying to put the tray down on the desk without dropping it in Sheppard’s lap. “You like the training? Like the kids?”

  “Let us say I am gentler about it than Rodney would be.”

  “Than Rodney would be,” she repeated.

  Zelenka shrugged self-depreciatingly. “It is a mania with me. I will not stop speaking of the lost. I will not say their names in hushed voices, as though I were afraid to invoke them. I will not paint them saints or less than they were.”

  “You don’t think they’re going to find Dr. McKay?” she asked quietly. That was the question that everyone had, but no one would ask.

  Zelenka’s blue eyes were frank, though his voice was low. “I think it is very unlikely that Rodney is still alive. It is unlikely he survived his first interrogation. I have seen the Wraith drink from someone, from a prisoner bound to a chair. I have seen how it goes. And I am not certain that I can wish Rodney still alive for days and days of that.”

  Eva swallowed hard, but she had to ask. “And the prisoner. Did he die?”

  Zelenka’s mouth twisted wryly. “It was Colonel Sheppard. So, no.”

  * * *

  Dick Woolsey opened the door to his office courteously. “Banks, will you show Miss Radim to guest quarters where she can rest? Also, please see if you can find her some clean clothing while her own is washed.” He gave Dahlia Radim his best smile. “We will make arrangements immediately to contact Chief Radim and apprise him of the situation. You are welcome to speak with him of course, and there will be no constraints whatsoever on your conversation.”

  “Thank you,” Dahlia Radim said. Her voice was still frosty, but she was no longer shaking with anger.

  “Banks?”

  “I’d be delighted, ma’am,” Amelia Banks said. “Right this way.”

  “Colonel Sheppard, if you would stay.” Woolsey kept his voice neutral until the door closed again. Sheppard looked ragged. By his own admission he’d only slept five hours in more than three days. That knowledge tempered him somewhat. But.

  “Sure,” Sheppard said, dropping back into the visitor chair as Dick went around his desk to resume his own seat. “I know what you’re going to say, and…”

  “Colonel Sheppard,” Dick broke in. “What were you thinking? Do you have any idea what the ramifications of bringing that Ancient warship here are?”

  “We can’t keep it,” Sheppard said, scrubbing his hand over his chin. “We’ve got to give it back to Ladon Radim.”

  “Of course we have to give it to Ladon Radim!” Dick was finally starting to lose his temper, and he reined himself in. “We can’t possibly do anything else under the circumstances. Keeping it would be a declaration of war for all practical purposes!”

  “Then I don’t see what the problem is,” Sheppard began. “I told her we’d give it to them.”

  “Do you understand the political consequences of having an Ancient warship and then just giving it away? Do you have any idea what the IOA or General O’Neill are going to say about how we found an Ancient warship that could be critical to us, an operational Ancient warship, and then we gave it to the Genii? We gave spacefaring capability to our shakiest and most power
ful ally?”

  Sheppard blinked. “You didn’t say that when I called in and told you what the deal was.”

  “That is because what you told me was an entirely different circumstance. It’s one thing for us to render technical assistance with a salvage operation in order to build good will with an ally. It’s another thing to give them a goddamed warship!” Dick never lost his temper, but it was gone now. “As long as we never had it, as long as it was a Genii salvage project we were assisting with, we could go along. But the minute you brought a functional Ancient warship here and landed it in Atlantis, you changed the entire game!”

  “I had to,” Sheppard said. “The ship wasn’t in good enough shape to make the Genii homeworld, and Carson and Teyla both needed medical attention. Dahlia couldn’t fix the ship, and it was barely spaceworthy enough to get here.”

  “And do you know why you couldn’t fix the ship?” Dick asked sharply. “Have you thought through that one? Why you were wandering around in the desert in the first place being attacked by wild animals?”

  Sheppard nodded, his face closing. “Because I didn’t return to Atlantis to get a technical crew to accompany us.”

  “Yes.” Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Not so hard. No point in belaboring the point. “I know that you don’t want to replace Dr. McKay on your team, but the lack of technical skills nearly got all of you killed. It is essential that you maintain a team that is able to deal with the common challenges you face, and at present without Dr. McKay that is not the case.” He folded his hands on the desk before him. “Therefore, as of now, Dr. Zelenka is on the gate team.”

  Sheppard lifted his eyes. “Radek Zelenka isn’t…”

  “Qualified to be on the gate team? Then name someone else. Dr. Kusanagi? Dr. Sauneron?” Dick was adamant. “You have to have someone with the requisite technical skills on the gate team. That’s not negotiable.”

  He expected Sheppard to argue, but instead he nodded slowly. “Ok. It’s Zelenka then. Until Rodney gets back.”

  “Until Dr. McKay returns and is able to resume his duties,” Dick agreed.

 

‹ Prev