Allegiance

Chapter Twenty-one Obstacles

“Dr. Keller?”

Jennifer pulled off her exam gloves and thumbed on her radio. “Keller here.”

“Ma’am, you wanted me to tell you when Colonel Sheppard and his team returned,” Airman Salawi said.

“I did, didn’t I,” Jennifer said. She felt the knot settle back in the pit of her stomach, the one she’d managed to distract herself from while checking out Dr. Altman’s sore throat. “So how did it go with the Satedans and the Genii?”

“All right, I think?” Salawi said, in tones that suggested that she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to have been listening to whatever post-mission conversation had gone on in the control room. “No injuries to our people, anyway.”

“Well, that’s what we like from a diplomatic conference,” Jennifer said, although given the Satedans and the Genii, it probably hadn’t been a foregone conclusion.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m not in the Air Force,” Jennifer pointed out. “You don’t actually have to call me ‘ma’am’ all the time.”

“Sorry, Dr. Keller.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jennifer said. She glanced at her computer screen again, wondering if she should run one more set of the simulations of Rodney’s recovery. It wasn’t as if using the same data and the same computer models was going to give her different results, but there was some part of her that stubbornly hoped that it would.

She picked up her laptop instead and headed up to Woolsey’s office, which was now at least temporarily Sheppard’s office. The first few times she’d had to make these kinds of reports, it had been in Elizabeth’s office, sparely but beautifully decorated with the artifacts of half a dozen worlds. Woolsey’s was more a stubborn little oasis of Earth, as if asserting his own personality over the space was his small act of rebellion against the weight of people’s expectations.

It was hard to imagine what Sheppard would do with it if it turned out to be his office on a more permanent basis. He had an office of his own, but he was hardly ever in it, and as far as Jennifer could tell it wasn’t much more than an oversized closet full of paperwork and spare clips of ammunition.

She paused for a moment outside the door of his office, then squared her shoulders and walked in. “Colonel Sheppard? If you’ve got a minute, there’s something we need to talk about.”

“Sure,” Sheppard said. “Is there a problem?” He looked like he hoped the answer was no. “We just got in.”

“I know,” Jennifer said by way of apology. “But, yes, I think we may have a problem. You know we’ve been trying to figure out how the Wraith retrovirus works, so that we can reverse its effects.”

“Yeah, and?”

Jennifer took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “All of our efforts to transform the Wraith completely into humans have involved essentially writing over the part of their DNA that comes from the Iratus bug with human DNA.”

“I know that much.”

“So, what we keep finding is that the Iratus bug’s regenerative abilities — which are also present in the Wraith — make it very difficult to eradicate the Iratus bug DNA completely from someone’s system. It was possible the time when you were transforming into a bug — ”

Sheppard looked sour. “I try not to remember.”

“Sorry,” Jennifer said. “But that transformation left your body in such an unstable state that it was easy to get your body to reject the alien DNA. The Wraith combination of Iratus bug and human DNA is stable, and in some ways almost self-protective. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that somebody had deliberately designed it that way.”

“You may not be wrong,” Sheppard said. “We know that the Wraith are pretty advanced at genetic engineering, given the way they grow their ships — ”

“Yeah, I try not to remember that,” Jennifer said.

“It would have been pretty cool to have our own hive ship,” Sheppard said, and then, “Joking. That was a joke.”

“Very funny,” Jennifer said. “My point is, I think given a little more time I could work out how to transform a human permanently into a Wraith.”

“If we wanted to do that,” Sheppard said. “Which we don’t, although being able to do it temporarily could be useful.”

“It could be, if we could do it,” Jennifer said. She was aware that she was talking around the point, as if as long as she didn’t say it, it could stay hypothetical, an anxiety to keep her up at night rather than her best professional opinion. “The thing is, I’ve gone through about a hundred computer models, I’ve run simulation after simulation, and… I’m really sorry,” she said. “But I don’t think we can permanently reverse what the Wraith have done to Rodney. I just don’t think it can be done.”

She could see Sheppard’s jaw tightening, see him glance away as if meeting her eyes would betray that he was upset. “I’m sorry,” she said again uselessly. She was aware that she was doing the same thing, shoving her own feelings down under professional distance that left her cold, but she wished he’d say something. It would be easier to play the role of comforter than to watch Sheppard leashing whatever it was he felt about this before he’d meet her eyes.

“All right,” Sheppard said, finally looking back at her. “What can you do?”

“Well,” Jennifer said, trying to assemble her thoughts. “I’m hoping that we can come up with a way to temporarily suppress at least most of the Iratus bug DNA, something that would be safe to use as a long-term therapy. Like Carson’s original retrovirus, but hopefully without global amnesia as a side effect.”

“Yeah, that would be good,” Sheppard said.

“I want to be really clear, though. I don’t know that something like that will work. If not…” Jennifer let out a breath. “I think there’s a pretty good chance that trying out the treatments that we’ve come up with will put so much strain on Rodney’s system that he’s either going to need to feed or… basically, or we’re going to kill him.”

“Well, Rodney feeding isn’t really an option,” Sheppard said. There was something off in his tone, though, and she wished that she had a better idea what was going on behind those eyes.

“No, it’s not,” Jennifer said. “Hopefully, we’ll have enough warning if our treatments are making things worse that we can put him in stasis until we come up with something better.”

“Right,” Sheppard said. He let out a breath. “All right. What can I get you that’ll help?”

Jennifer blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You don’t know how much I wish this was a problem that could be solved by going out and shooting something,” Sheppard said. “There’s probably going to be that part of the problem, and I’m really looking forward to that. But right now, my job is to make sure that you have whatever you need to do your job, so you can figure out a way to help Rodney.”

“You mean, what would help short of having a Wraith bioengineer tell me exactly what they did and what they think might fix it?”

“That’s not out of the question,” Sheppard said. “Todd still owes me one. More than one, the way I figure it.” He looked her over. “How much time have you been spending on this outside of your scheduled work hours?”

Jennifer hoped that didn’t mean she looked as strung out as she felt. “Nobody ever told me I had a schedule,” she said.

“Very funny,” Sheppard said. “How about we see if Daedalus or Hammond can spare one of their physicians to take over your office hours for a while? Because as much as I know we like to think around here that there are more than twenty-four hours in a day, I’m told that’s not actually true.”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “Frankly, my office hours are the only time right now that I feel like I’m actually getting any results. At least I can fix sprained ankles and treat strep throat.”

Sheppard shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

“I’ll think about it,” Jennifer said. “And I’ll let you know if I can think of anything else that would help.”

“Okay,” Sheppard said. He glanced around the office as if he still wasn’t entirely comfortable being there. “We’ll figure this out.” Whatever else he might have said was cut off as an alarm sounded from the gateroom below.

“Unscheduled offworld activation!”

“So much for anybody getting more rest,” Jennifer said under her breath as Sheppard headed for the door. At least the mechanical iris was in place.

John hurried into the control room, vaguely aware that Keller had abandoned him. Headed to the infirmary, he assumed, and turned his attention to the situation. Below in the gate room, Marines scrambled into position, weapons at the ready, and the new iris team kicked the generator from stand-by to full ready. Its whine filled the air, and Salawi had to raise her voice a little to be heard above the sound.

“No IDC, sir.”

“Close the iris.”

“Yes, sir.”

The new bell sounded — yet another alarm, John thought — and the sergeant in charge of the iris team hauled back on the lever. Carter and Zelenka had had a long discussion about why it was simpler, and better than a button, something to do with failsafes and the gearing, but he hadn’t been paying much attention, hoped only that it would be simple enough. And faster. The plates were moving, sliding against each other, intersecting to eclipse the event horizon, but it seemed to take forever for them to meet in the middle, the plates interlocking at last to form a spiky metal star. Behind it, the event horizon shimmered blue, casting watery shadows. Zelenka brushed past him and slid into the seat next to Salawi’s, frowning as he touched his keyboard.

“No sign of any transmission,” Salawi said, dubiously, and Zelenka spared her a crooked smile.

“We have seen that before, yes?”

“Sir,” a Marine said, and John turned to take the P90 the young woman handed to him. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Lorne lurch into the control room, P90 dangling from his chest harness. He put down his crutches, braced himself against the console, and tucked the P90 into firing position. John opened his mouth to order him away, but the radio sounded in his ear.

“Colonel Sheppard. What’s going on?”

That was Caldwell on the command frequency, and John touched his radio. “We have an unscheduled gate activation. We’ve closed the iris.”

There was a second of silence, and John could almost hear the unspoken questions. “Keep me informed,” Caldwell said instead, and cut the connection.

Zelenka said something in Czech, and looked over his shoulder. “Colonel Sheppard. We are under attack. It’s Rodney.”

“Or someone using his codes,” John said. He looked at Salawi. “Lock us down. And put me on citywide.”

“Yes, sir.” Her hands flew over the keyboard.

John waited for her nod, then took a breath. “This is Colonel Sheppard. We have an unscheduled gate activation and a computer intrusion. We are initiating a full lockdown immediately. Sheppard out.”

In the gate room, he saw a flash of bronze hair as Colonel Carter moved to join the iris team. He saw her head tilt as she examined the interlocking plates, tilt again as she turned to speak to the sergeant in charge.

“Ty sráèi,” Zelenka said, his hands working. He looked over his shoulder as the lights flickered. “Apparently Rodney had another bolthole.” He turned back to his monitor, scowling through his glasses. “Ach, ty lstivý bastarde.” He shook his head. “I have lost the shield.”

If we had one, John thought. His hands tightened on the P90, and he made himself relax his grip. That’ll teach me, he thought. Not five minutes ago, I was saying to Keller that I wanted to solve problems by shooting them. Remind me never to make dumb remarks like that again.

“And I have lost main power,” Zelenka said. The lights flickered again, came back up. “Ale ano, mám tì! We are on back-up now.” He peered at his screen. “And holding. He is locked out. Of that, at least.”

The event horizon glowed behind the iris. John knew how the iris was supposed to work: it lay so close to the surface of the puddle that matter wasn’t able to reintegrate, was destroyed before it could exit the system. Something thudded against the shield, and he flinched, bit his lip. Surely that wasn’t — but the thud came again, and another, a series of blows like hail on asphalt, too dull for explosions, but each one a death. The gate’s occluded light shivered, rippled and changed; John had lost count of how many hits the iris had taken, and the thuds kept coming. In the gate room, Carter was watching the plates, the Marines ready at her back, and still the iris rang dully. One of those thuds could be Rodney. John pushed the thought away. Rodney was working the computers, he told himself. He wouldn’t come though until he knew he had Atlantis’s systems under his control; Radek was giving him a hard fight, he’d be needed on the hive…

The sounds stopped. John took a breath, waiting for the wormhole to collapse, but it stayed open, reflecting blue against the gateroom walls. Carter looked up at him from her place beside the iris controls.

“Probe first,” she said, sounding almost serene, “then explosives.”

“Right,” John said. The Wraith weren’t stupid — and especially Rodney wasn’t stupid, he’d figure out what they’d done, and try to blow open the gate.

There was a new sound from the gate, higher, harder. The probe, John thought. “Fall back!” he shouted. “Everybody into cover!”

Carter gave him a look at that — if the iris failed, it would take half the gate room with it, and they would be seriously screwed regardless — but the Marines scrambled obediently for their secondary positions. There was a long pause, the only sound the whine of the generator and the occasional click of keys, and then there was a huge and heavy whump, a sound so deep John felt it in the marrow of his bones. The iris shivered, and held. A minute passed, then another, and then the wormhole collapsed.

John took a deep breath and then another, feeling the tightness in his arms and shoulders, saw Lorne reach wincing for his crutches. He set his P90 aside, got the crutches under his arms, and hung there for a moment, breathing hard, before he straightened.

“Stand down,” John called, and motioned to Salawi. “Citywide.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is Colonel Sheppard. The city is secure. We are ending the lockdown. I repeat, the city is secure. Sheppard out.” He drew a finger across his throat, and Salawi cut the broadcast. He looked at Lorne. “I wouldn’t call this light duty, Major.”

Lorne had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry, sir. But I was right here, and — ”

John nodded. “Yeah. I know. Don’t do it again.” He looked around the control room. “Nice job, people. Very nice job.”

Zelenka finished typing something, and swung away from his keyboard, the lights gleaming off his glasses. “And we are secure again.”

“Good work with the iris, Radek,” John said, and felt the words were ridiculously insufficient.

Zelenka gave a flick of a smile and lifted his eyebrows. “I would not like to do that every day. But, yes, it has held.”

The iris unfolded with a soft hiss of metal on metal, and Carter came up the stairs, shaking her head. “That was interesting.”

“Impressive,” John said. “It sounded like they lost a few men there before they figured out what happened.”

Carter nodded. “Sounded like it. Pity they won’t try it again.”

“For what it is worth,” Zelenka said, “Rodney was not among them. He was trying to break into the system throughout the attack.”

“Figures,” John said, and didn’t know exactly what to feel.

The wormhole collapsed, leaving the Stargate empty, the red hills of this barren world caught in its perfect circle. The air around it roiled in confusion and anger and above it all the long harsh shriek of the queen’s loss. Quicksilver stared at the screen of his portable computer, baffled and furious. He should have known — should have guessed, anyway, even if the Lanteans had left the shield program intact and running to attract his attention. He should have insisted on sending a probe first, even if it would have given the Lanteans a few moments’ warning…

*Thirty men,* Death cried. *And my blades.* She did not name Sky, who had led the second party, nor did she need to, and the circling blades flinched from her grief.

*I knew we should send a probe,* someone said, and the queen whirled, her skirts flying.

*Who says that now?*

There was no answer: the thought had been fleeting, involuntary, and no one dared claim the words.

Quicksilver ducked his head, scrolling back through the pages of data. If he could not save the dead, at least he could see how they had failed. Certainly someone had been though his programs, excised them from the Ancient systems — sometimes neatly, a hand he thought he should know, sometimes with equal skill but less precision — so that he had had to fall back on the last of his failsafes, the one program he had been almost sure they would not find, and could not eradicate completely if they did.

*You, Quicksilver,* the Old One said, softly. *Was there no sign of this change?*

Quicksilver looked up, scowling. *If there had been, I would have told you so. Everything seems to be just as it was before — except, as I told you they would, they’d found my first way in.*

*We must attack at once,* Farseer said, *and revenge our losses.*

*It’s still too far from any base of ours,* Noontide said. *And Atlantis — this proves they’re too strong to take on lightly.”

Death looked at him coldly. *Do you call this a light choice, blade?*

Noontide bowed deeply. *I do not, my queen.*

*A wise answer.* Death lifted her head. *And it is I who will choose our next action.*

*This one swore he could get us past their defenses.* That was Flare, whose full brother had led the first wave. He raised his feeding hand — deadly insult — and pointed at Quicksilver. *He has betrayed us, my queen. Kill him now, tainted thing — *

*Be silent,* the queen hissed, the words a blow that drove Flare to one knee. She turned slowly. *What, then, is your explanation, Quicksilver?*

*My queen.* Quicksilver stared at his screen, not daring to meet her eyes. *The Lanteans must have built some kind of mechanical barrier for their Stargate — a moveable one, they couldn’t afford to block it entirely. It is not tied into their computers, or I would have found the controls there.*

*It withstood the most powerful explosive we had with us,* Nighthaze said thoughtfully. He was a cleverman, a specialist in such things. *Perhaps something more powerful could breach this barrier?*

*What I’d like to know,* Farseer said, *is why this one didn’t know of it?* He gestured toward Quicksilver, who lifted his head.

*Because they didn’t have it when I was there,* he said. *That should be obvious.*

The Old One turned to survey the Stargate, tilting his head so that his thin braid slithered across the back of his coat. *I don’t believe it’s even possible. A moveable barrier for the gate? I cannot conceive it.*

*Well, obviously it is possible,* Quicksilver said. *And I know who did it. That has to be McKay’s work — I’m sure of it, he’s the only one of them clever enough to design such a thing, make it work within the wormhole’s tolerances. And he’s got an assistant, what’s-his-name — he could build it for him. With guidance. And it’s McKay who’s locked me out — * He stopped, aware of a strange tension in the air around him. *What?*

*You will not speak that name again,* Death said. Her tone was even, her anger leashed, and all the more terrifying for it. The fingers of her feeding hand spread and flexed, and Quicksilver ducked his head. *That is my will and command, do you hear me? Never again.*

Quicksilver went to his knees under the force of her gaze. *Yes, my queen.*

Into the sudden silence, Guide said, mildly, *The Lanteans are quick to learn, my queen.* He did not say that he had said as much before, but everyone knew it. Death’s eyes narrowed.

*What, then, would you have us do?*

*Return to the hive, my queen,* Guide said. *We have given the Lanteans more cause to fear us, and that will buy us time to reconnoiter, to plan a direct assault. They, on the other hand, must wonder every moment when we will next bombard this shield of theirs — and perhaps we should do just that, and keep them worrying. It is not an altogether worthless result.*

Death eyed him for a long moment, and then she had mastered herself *No. Not entirely. Very well. Let us go.*

Quicksilver hauled himself to his feet, his mind still ringing as though he’d been struck. He reached for his computer, hunching his shoulders as though that could hide him from the queen, but she turned to block his path. He froze, the computer still in his hands, and Death laid her feeding hand against his chest. Even through his coat, he could feel the prick of her claws, see the shift of muscles as she slowly tensed her fingers. She smiled.

*Do not forget what I have told you, cleverman.*