Entanglement

Chapter seven

Ronon knew the others were dead when he heard Sheppard shout, "Wraith!"

The radio went to static and Zelenka slammed his hand on the console, shouting, "Rodney! Colonel, Teyla!" Kusanagi gasped in horror.

They stared at the useless screens while time crawled. Then the three life signs winked out like candles.

Kusanagi made a noise in her throat, pressing her hands over her face. Zelenka pushed out of his seat and stumbled out of the cockpit into the rear cabin; Ronon heard him retching.

Ronon just turned away. He stared blindly at the jumper's curved wall, his fists knotting. He should be used to this. He had seen so many people taken by the Wraith that it had all blurred into a haze of rage and pain and loss. He shouldn't feel it like this anymore. He didn't want to feel it like this anymore.

Zelenka stepped back into the cockpit, wiping his face with a cloth. "We must do something." He steadied himself on the back of the co-pilot's seat, dropping into it and studying the screens again. He said hesitantly, "Did it sound like… Did they have the chance to damage pulse generator, do you think?"

Kusanagi shook her head. "I don't think Dr. McKay would have had time-" She pressed her hand over her mouth and shuddered, then took a sharp breath. She managed to finish, "Time to get into the device. And there has been no discharge. It must still be operating."

"I can do it," Ronon said. Zelenka and Kusanagi turned to stare up at him blankly, and he explained, "Go up to the roof, see how far they got. You can tell me what to do to it over the radio."

Startled, Zelenka frowned at him, then looked at Kusanagi. She said softly, "It may be the only way." Ronon saw she had tears running down her cheeks, though she seemed unaware of them. "We can't leave the Mirror to the Wraith. If they can use it to get this superior technology-"

"Yes. Yes, we have to do this." Zelenka looked up uncertainly. "Perhaps I should go with you-"

"No." Ronon shook his head. He could see the little man was terrified of the prospect. And he had sworn to Sheppard that he would protect these two. He had also sworn that he wouldn't leave them, but he thought this was more important. "I'll move faster alone."

Zelenka hesitated, then nodded, his mouth set in a rueful line. Kusanagi turned back to the control board, awkwardly wiping the tears off her face. "You'll have to wait until they leave the area." She frowned at the life signs screen. The lighted dots were still moving around that section of the roof. Ronon allowed himself a grim smile. The Wraith were searching, trying to figure out what the three humans had been up to. That meant nobody had broken. Kusanagi said, "If the Wraith realize we were trying to sabotage the pulse generator-"

Zelenka studied the screen worriedly. "Surely they won't leave it unguarded."

Ronon bared his teeth. He was looking forward to the chance to deliver some payback. "Good."

John's first conscious thought was relief that he could draw a full breath. His second thought was that his face hurt. A lot. And his head. And pretty much his entire body. He heard Rodney say worriedly, "Shake him again. Careful, he might have brain damage."

John blinked, wincing. "How will that help if I have-" It hurt to talk. "Ow."

He managed to get his eyes open all the way when someone touched his shoulder. It was Teyla looking anxiously down at him, her hair in a disordered tumble and a darkening bruise on her cheek. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yeah, are you okay? What-" Wraith, John remembered. Gritting his teeth, he shoved himself upright. Rodney lay a short distance away, one arm flung over his eyes. He looked like he felt like hell, but otherwise he seemed unhurt. John looked down at himself, his shirt was torn where the Wraith had grabbed him, but there was no feeding mark. What do you know about that? They were all three alive and they hadn't been fed on, and John really hadn't been expecting that.

Their prison was an empty cabin, the walls and floor the same dark rubbery substance they had seen in Trishen's base ship. This place had the same smell too, earthy and a little acrid. There was an oval hatchway looking out into another compartment, but John could see the faint shimmer in the air of a force shield blocking it. He said, "We're in Trishen's ship?"

"We believe so." Teyla looked around the room, her expression grim. "Apparently she beamed us up, away from the other Wraith."

"Who stunned me twice, and yes, I have a migraine, thank you for asking," Rodney added, his voice tight. "We're in her shuttle, but I think it's docked with the base ship now."

"Great." John spotted something on the floor, a round blue thing, a foot or so inside the hatchway. He squinted at it suspiciously. "What's that?"

Teyla's lips thinned. "It contains water, and some items that may be packaged rations."

John grimaced in disgust. The caretaker on the first hiveship they had encountered had liked to feed her human prey before she fed on them; Trishen must have the same taste. John rolled to his knees, and Teyla grabbed his arm to steady him. After a moment of dizziness, he managed to shove himself to his feet. Glancing up, he froze. "What the hell?"

The ceiling arched up into a circular dome, and in the center was a bulbous mottled purple thing, covered by a chased silver metal web. It looked organic and alien and possibly about to do something to them. Teyla looked up with a worried wince. "I do not know."

From the floor, Rodney said, "It's not a death ray, it's the rematerialization mechanism for the beaming device." He lowered his arm to peer suspiciously at it, and amended, "It's probably not a death ray."

"Okay." Probably not a death ray was likely as good as the situation was going to get. John looked around the cabin again, as Teyla stepped away to make a circuit of the walls. John didn't see anything that looked like an obvious surveillance camera, but the ship was too alien to really tell. And the beaming device thing worried him. He said, "So she could beam us out of here any time she wants." Into the thin atmosphere, with no breathing units. "Or beam something in here with us."

Rodney pulled his arm down again to give John an acid glare. "Yes, please continue to come up with as many horrible death scenarios as possible; really, it's helping my headache."

"You seem to enjoy it when you do it." John made it to the force-shielded hatchway, peering out into the next compartment.

"Yes, but when I-" Rodney gave in grudgingly. "All right, fine."

From what John could see, the outer compartment wasn't much larger than this cabin, empty except for open storage units set into the walls. The only visible exit was in the opposite wall, another oval doorway, with a sealed hatch. He stretched out a cautious hand, flinching back when the field zapped him. Wincing, he tucked his hand under his arm.

Teyla had crouched down, testing the field to make sure it went all the way to the floor. "I do not see any way we can get through this."

John nodded, looking down at her. "No equipment, no breathing gear, no weapons…" He lifted his brows.

She flicked him a rueful look and tapped her ankle, the gesture telling him that the Wraith hadn't found the knife she kept strapped to her calf. Right. It was better than nothing. He looked at the outer compartment again, and said, "Maybe she wasn't lying about wanting to fix the Mirror. Or maybe she just wants dinner."

Still on the floor nursing his headache, Rodney said, "The fact that this is the Pegasus Galaxy and the worstcase scenario is always a statistically likely probability notwithstanding, I don't think she's allied with the Wraith that arrived in the scout ship. They tried to question me about her ship, called it `alien,' as if finding it here was as big a surprise to them as it was to us. And I don't think she's like the Wraith of our reality."

Teyla pushed to her feet, turning to watch him dubiously. "What do you mean?"

"She was acting," John said, poking sourly at the force shield.

"Since when do Wraith act?" Rodney started to struggle into a sitting position, and Teyla moved to help him. "I don't think she was lying about never having seen a human before."

Frowning, John stepped over to him and leaned down, offering Rodney a hand up. "Why?"

Rodney gripped John's hand and groaned as John hauled him to his feet. Rodney eyed him a moment, then made an erratic gesture. "Some of our equipment was beamed up with us. She came in here to get it while you and Teyla were unconscious. It just didn't look like..she had seen a human before."

"Whatever. If they don't eat humans, they eat somebody else." John looked around again, frustrated. He hated being locked up. "You want to check these walls, see if there's any way to-"

"Wait." Teyla was staring intently toward the door. "Someone is coming."

John turned, stepping sideways so he could see into the outer compartment. The hatch was sliding up. Yeah, here we go, he thought.

Trishen stepped through the hatch into the outer compartment, stopping just inside it as if she was afraid, as if they weren't across the room and trapped behind this force shield. Instead of the concealing environmental suit, she was wearing a dress, purple-gray in the tinted light, with a utility belt around her waist holding various tools and pouches. She also had a silver wristband with control pads on it, like the others John had seen Wraith wear, but more compact.

"Long time no see," John said easily.

Trishen didn't come any closer. She pressed her hands together; if she had been human, John would have said she looked nervous but resolved. And he wished like hell she would stop doing that, stop acting like a person, because it was pissing him off. She said stiffly, "What were you trying to do to the Mirror?"

Rodney lifted his chin and folded his arms. "Why should we tell you?"

She blinked at him. "I know what you think I am now, I know why you were afraid. But I am not one of them. My species may appear similar, but we do not…use sentient beings for sustenance. I won't harm you."

John exchanged a look with Teyla, whose expression of grim skepticism said she wasn't buying this either. John said, "Okay. Then drop the force shield and let us out of here."

Trishen had the audacity to sound pissed. "I can't. I know you would kill me."

Teyla lifted her brows, her expression dry. "We would be fools to believe you when you can offer us no proof."

Trishen shook her head in apparent frustration. "I'm not lying! There are no humans in my reality. We know that the Creators tried to seed a human race at the same time they created us, but their early colonies died out from some sort of plague."

Rodney snorted with annoyance, giving them all a sour look. "Do you people have all day to stand here and argue this point? Because I don't." He turned to Trishen, waving a hand dismissively. "Let's stipulate for the moment that I believe you're telling the truth. If you don't intend to feed on us, what exactly do you want?"

She took a step forward, her fists knotting. "There's an array on the roof that has an effect on the Mirror's accretion surface. Were you trying to destabilize it?"

Rodney gave her a withering look. "Of course we were. And again, why do you ask?"

John shot him a glare and Rodney glared back. Okay fine, if she knows what the pulse generator is for then she probably already realizes what we were doing there, John thought. But Rodney needed to be a little more reticent with the information, here.

She took a sharp breath. "If you help me stabilize the Mirror, I will let you go. I'll take you back to your ship-"

"No." Rodney's mouth twisted. "Next question."

Trishen shook her head, frustrated and angry. "I just want to get back to my own reality-"

Rodney's voice was acid. "Yes, well, I'm sorry we can't make your welfare a priority, since we're a little more concerned at the moment with saving the lives of our entire species."

It was her turn to glare at Rodney. "The Mirror is not a weapon. I thought you understood that."

Rodney gave her the little "you're so stupid" laugh, the one guaranteed to send his science team colleagues into paroxysms of fury. "Please, not counting any stray Ascendants, I'm the Pegasus Galaxy's foremost expert on Quantum Mirrors, and yes, it's not a weapon." His expression hardened. "But your ship is."

Teyla shifted uncertainly, throwing a look at John. Yeah, he really didn't want to put those cards on the table. He said, "Rodney."

Trishen made a sharp gesture, apparently genuinely exasperated. "This ship has no offensive weapons! You're the ones with weapons-"

Rodney set his jaw. "Our weapons are woefully inadequate against the Wraith, and most of the humans here have no weapons, they've been bombed back into a preindustrial level of technology-"

John stared at him incredulously. "Rodney!"

Rodney raised his voice, out-shouting John to finish with, "-so the Wraith, your nearest genetic relatives in this reality, can keep them like cattle and feed on them at their leisure!" He shot a look at John and said, lowvoiced, "I know what I'm doing."

John hoped like hell Rodney knew what he was doing, that he hadn't just issued an invitation to a whole different set of Wraith from another reality to invade Pegasus and feed on its nearly helpless inhabitants. He just said, "You'd better."

Ignoring him, watching Trishen narrowly, Rodney said, "The Wraith destroyed the Ancients, drove the last of them out of this galaxy by sheer force of numbers, but they never defeated their technology. The weapons, the sensors, and the cloaking device on our ship are the only way that we can put up any effective resistance whatsoever. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

Trishen stared at him, and it was hard to read the expression in those alien eyes. "My sensors. They use technology left behind by the Creators-your Ancients. That's why I could see your ship through its cloaking device." She shook her head. "If you think I will give it to the Wraith-I have no reason to do that! I just want to go home."

"I don't think you'll give it to them." Rodney stepped forward, his face grim as he hammered his point home. "I think they'll take it. And if they know there's more in your reality, I think they'll go through the Mirror to get it."

Teyla was watching Trishen with clinical detachment. She added, "And if you believe your resemblance to them makes you safe, you are wrong. They will feed on their own kind when no humans are available. And there are far too many of them awake now; for the past year they have been in search of a new feeding ground."

John added, "So if you're not going to eat us, let us go.

Trishen stood there, staring at them, breathing hard. "I can't-I have to think about this." She turned in a whirl of skirts and vanished back through the hatch, the door sliding shut after her.

John let his breath out, pacing a few steps away and rubbing his eyes. His jaw hurt, they were stuck here, and he wasn't seeing much hope of keeping this ship and its technology away from the Wraith. He wasn't seeing much hope of keeping them away from the Wraith, either. "I see where you're trying to go with this, Rodney, but we could have tried to string her along a little."

"We don't have time for that." Rodney turned to him impatiently. "Ahiveship is probably on the way here right now.

"Do we have time for this?" Teyla asked him pointedly. "You really think she will see reason and release us to destroy the Mirror?"

Rodney's jaw set in stubborn certainty. "She's a scientist. Yes, I think she'll see reason."

"She is a Wraith, whatever she calls herself." Teyla's voice was hard. "She will have no concern for anything except feeding and her own hive."

Rodney waved an arm, frustrated. "Then why isn't she making a deal with these Wraith?"

John shook his head in exasperation, glaring up at the death ray/beaming thing in the ceiling. "We don't know that she isn't."

Teyla paced away from the door, frowning. "And I still cannot believe that she is what she claims to be, even if it is true that she came here through the Mirror. Why would the Ancestors who escaped to her reality deliberately recreate the Wraith? It makes no sense."

Rodney said impatiently, "It does, if you consider the plague; she said her people thought the `Creators' and the other race they tried to seed were wiped out by it. If it was at all similar to the plague that destroyed the Ancients in the Milky Way, we know how virulent it was, that they never discovered a cure." Rodney paced, warming to his theory. "If these Ancients thought the only way to pass along their DNA was to use the Iratus bug mutation, which they already knew could be combined with human DNA-" He stopped, facing them, pointing toward the sealed hatch. "If they controlled its development, bred out the need to feed off sentient beings, made it as human as they could without allowing it to be susceptible to the plague, they could have produced something like Trishen. A Wraith-like being with pronounced human behavioral characteristics who has the Ancient gene."

Teyla shook her head, looking away. "I hope you are right," she said quietly.

"And she didn't say her species couldn't feed on sentient beings, Rodney," John pointed out. "She said they didn't." He lifted his brows. "That's a big difference."

The Wraith were taking their time searching the roof, so Ronon went into the jumper's rear cabin, sitting on the bench to check his gun and sharpen his knives. Much as he would like to take on the whole group, he knew destroying the Mirror was more important.

Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, and McKay had died for it.

Finally Zelenka ducked into the rear cabin, saying anxiously, "They are leaving the roof. There are only two left near the place where the others-Two, that's good?"

Ronon's mouth twisted in grim amusement. "That's good." He pushed to his feet, sliding his long knife back into the scabbard.

From the cockpit, Kusanagi said, "I can lift the jumper further up the shaft." Ronon looked through the hatchway to see the HUD pop up a skeletal outline of the space directly above the jumper, showing the straight shaft and then what looked like a large doorway, maybe two levels up. The image was fuzzy on the edges, the Mirror still interfering with the ship's scanning abilities. Kusanagi pointed. "There. That opening, maybe it would give you a quicker route to the roof."

Ronon nodded. "Try it."

While Kusanagi slowly guided the jumper up the shaft, Ronon let Zelenka fuss around checking his radio and making sure his air tanks were topped off. The odd thing was that Ronon thought Zelenka was doing it because he really wanted Ronon to come back alive, not because he was afraid of being left with no one to guard him. "You have enough guns?" Zelenka asked him finally, waving a hand around at the supplies and weapons stored in the overhead racks. "There are extras."

"I've got enough," Ronon said, but he took a few of the small explosives meant for throwing, the ones called "grenades."

Kusanagi found the opening, a shattered hatchway leading into a space that might be for unloading freight, and rotated the jumper so the ramp was facing it. Ronon took a last look at the life signs screen, committing the Wraith's current positions to memory. The handheld detector wouldn't work unless somebody with the Ancestors' blood, like Sheppard or McKay or Kusanagi, was close enough to touch it. But Kusanagi and Zelenka could follow his progress with the jumper's screens, and warn him if the Wraith were about to cross his path. Ronon had survived a long time without that kind of help, but he wasn't fool enough to turn it down when it was freely offered.

He waited in the rear cabin while Kusanagi sealed the cockpit door to keep the air in, then opened the ramp. All that was left of the hatchway into the freight bay was jagged metal and broken stone, leading into a dark dusty passage. Ronon didn't wait for the ramp to open all the way; he caught the edge of the hatch and swung across, landing on the platform. The metal creaked under his boots, but didn't give, and a moment later he was moving fast down the passage. He heard the ramp closing behind him, and Kusanagi's soft voice on the radio, whispering, "Be careful."

"Will you two sit down?" Rodney asked in exasperation.

"In a minute." John wasn't pacing because he was stir-crazy, he was pacing because he was trying to keep sore and strained muscles from stiffening up. If they had a chance to do anything, he wanted to be able to move. Rodney was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and Teyla, who did look stir-crazy, was pacing on the opposite side of the room from John.

They had poked all around the cabin, looking for a way to disarm the force shield. Rodney had used Teyla's knife on the rubbery wall-covering near the doorway, cutting through it to get to the controls to open and close the hatch. But those controls didn't affect the force shield, which was apparently generated by a separate unit somewhere on the other side of the wall. John figured that was why Trishen had used it to make their little prison; she had seen Rodney finesse the control panel for the ship's outer lock and had to know an inside hatchway wouldn't hold him long.

Rodney let his breath out, rubbing his face. "I don't suppose it's a good idea to try the rations she left. Or the water."

"It could be drugged." Teyla eyed the box with disapproval. "If she truly does not mean to feed on us, then she may have other designs."

Rodney frowned at her. "Drugged how?"

"It could turn us into zombies," John told him, picking a fate worse than death at random. His throat was painfully dry too, but he didn't think it was worth taking the chance.

Rodney contemplated the ceiling of the cabin in mock despair. "Yes, I'd worry about brain damage from the oxygen deprivation and the head injury, if I didn't know you were always like this."

John was watching Teyla. She had stopped pacing, and was rubbing her temple, her expression strained. She said abruptly, "I have been sensing Wraith, which is to be expected. But they seem.. closer now, than they did before. Very close."

"How close is very?" John asked. The cabin suddenly felt a lot smaller and even more cage-like. If Trishen had cut a deal with the other Wraith… "Inside the ship?"

"Wait, maybe you're sensing Trishen." Rodney shoved to his feet, steadying himself on the wall with a wince. "She could be in a cabin next to this one-"

"It is not her." Teyla shook her head, her lips pressed together. "I have never been able to sense her presence, even when she was standing in front of me." She looked at John, lifting a brow. "These Wraith are close, and angry.

John heard something outside and stepped to where he could see the sealed hatch in the outer compartment. A moment later it slid open and Trishen stepped in. John stood on his toes and craned his neck, trying to see if there were any more Wraith lurking in the passage behind her.

Trishen moved nearly to the force-shielded doorway. It was still hard for John to read her expression, but her body radiated tension. She looked at Teyla. "Were you telling the truth about the Wraith searching for new sentients to feed on?"

Folding her arms, Teyla eyed her deliberately. "To the best of my knowledge. There are not enough humans to support the number of hives, and on some worlds they have already culled entire populations. We know they grow increasingly desperate."

Trishen looked away, taking a sharp breath. "They're at the outer lock, trying to break into the ship." She pressed her hands together, as if steeling herself. "I don't have any weapons to stop them, and I can't repair the shields on the base ship, or the drive."

John shook his head with a grimace. Crap. I knew this was going to happen. Teyla's face hardened and she threw a grim look at John. Rodney threw his arms in the air in exasperation, saying, "Well, that limits your options, doesn't it? I told you they would want this ship, and they're going to want to know where you got it. Believe me, you won't like the way they ask the questions!" He added with bitter emphasis, "And if you don't let us go now, you might as well kill us yourself."

John snorted derisively to himself, thinking there wasn't a chance in hell of that. So it caught him completely by surprise when Trishen said, "I'll let you go, but listen to me first." She hesitated, shook her head a little. "I could take this shuttle, leave this system, but it isn't meant for long-range trips, and I know I have nowhere to go." She looked at Rodney, intent and desperate. "You told me you thought you could make the Mirror functional. If you agree to do that, or at least to try, I'll agree to destroy my base ship, so there is no possibility the Wraith will get its technology. If the Mirror can be activated, I'll take this shuttle back to my reality, and then you'll be free to do what you like to the Mirror."

Teyla lifted her brows, startled. Rodney stared at Trishen, so taken aback it was obvious he hadn't really expected her to give in either. He said, "Wait, that… sounds reasonable. That would work for us." He looked at John. "Right?"

John just really hoped this wasn't a trick, because otherwise he didn't see what the hell they were going to do. He asked Trishen, "What if he can't fix it?"

"Oh, fine!" Rodney objected, turning to John in outrage. "Let's cast doubt on my abilities right now! That'll help!"

Trishen shook her head impatiently. "I understand it may be impossible to make it operate again. I won't try to stop you from destabilizing it, if it comes to that. I'm trusting you to just give me a chance." She hesitated nervously. "I'm also trusting you not to kill me."

"Yeah, we're trusting you about that, too," John felt he had to point out. If the only thing she really wanted was to get back to her home reality, then this had half a chance of working. He threw a look at Teyla, got a sharp nod in reply. Rodney was making get on with it gestures. John said, "You've got a deal."

Trishen nodded tightly, and touched a control on her wristband. John saw the force shield shimmer. He moved forward, waved a hand to make sure it was really gone, then stepped through. Trishen backed away hastily, all the way to the far wall, which was fine with him. He said, "Where's our weapons?"

"In that cabinet." She pointed and he headed for it. The door was dark metal, thin and pleated into tiny ridges, almost like fabric. She began, "I have to unlock-" But when John touched it, the door slid open. She laughed a little, sounding startled rather than amused. "You really are descended from the Creators."

John didn't bother to reply, hauling out the P-90 that lay atop the pile and taking rapid inventory of the rest. Only one pistol, still holstered in Teyla's gun belt, but all three of their tac vests were there, Rodney's pack, and the SCBAs.

Rodney said, "It was set to respond only to the Ancient gene? Colonel Sheppard is a natural carrier, I have it artificially." He added, "What?" when John shoved his pack at him with a meaningful glare.

"We don't have time to chat." John handed Teyla her gun belt and tac vest and rapidly checked the P-90, making sure it hadn't been damaged or tampered with. So they had a temporary deal; he didn't want to give Trishen any more intel on them than they absolutely had to.

"We have no other weapons?" Teyla asked, buckling on her gun belt as she kept one eye on Trishen.

"That's it. At least we've got plenty of ammo." John pulled on his vest, clipping the P-90 to it, thinking, so far so good. He found a stray headset caught in the velcro on the vest and hooked it over his ear, switching the base unit on. He winced at the roar of static he got in response. He looked at Trishen, who was still watching them nervously. "We'll have to use your comm system to call our ship."

Rodney had torn open his pack, muttering a quick inventory of the contents. "Yes, I'm going to need Radek and Miko to work on this too, but first things first." He turned to Trishen. "Does the base ship have a selfdestruct?"

She shook her head. "No, it's a research vessel, there was no need for one. I was going to overload the drive. Should we-"

Rodney held up a finger. "First, I'll need to convert your shields to a cloak. The Wraith scout ship won't detect the shuttle's lift off, and when the base ship is destroyed, they'll assume everything went with it. Hopefully any Wraith on the ground close enough to notice the shuttle's sudden disappearance won't survive the explosion."

Trishen nodded, starting out of the compartment. "Yes, that's an excellent strategy."

Following her, Rodney's mouth twisted in grim amusement. "We've had some success with it in the past."

She led the way down the passage, past two other small compartments. The shuttle was filled with weird semi-organic devices, in colors from black to purple to pink. John had to admit, disturbing as the organic part was, it didn't look like a Wraith ship. But then the lack of webbing and skeletons and cocooned captives made a big impact.

Trishen stepped into a semi-circular cabin filled with the organic control consoles. Several round holographic displays floated in the air, most of them data readouts. She pointed to one of the consoles. "These are the controls for the shields. Can you-"

"Yes." Rodney studied the rapidly shifting display floating above it, and touched a few of the colored pads. "It's extremely similar to At-" Rodney turned the word into a cough, and finished hurriedly, "To shield consoles I've seen before. It should only take a few minutes."

Teyla kept her expression perfectly neutral and John rubbed the bridge of his nose, thinking that was close. Trishen's version of the Pegasus Galaxy wasn't likely to have an Atlantis, unless the Ancients had built one there, but the name might have appeared in their history somewhere. Even if the Mirror was destroyed, John just didn't want to send Trishen home with the idea that there was anything in this reality worth having.

But she hadn't appeared to notice Rodney's near-misstep. She nodded, saying, "Good. I've already set the drive to build up power, but I have to manually disengage the failsafes because-"

Rodney nodded, absorbed in the controls and readouts. "Because the drive is specifically designed not to do what you're trying to make it do, right. Get to it."

She hesitated. "I need to use the main console in the base ship…"

John got it. She didn't want to leave them up here alone, since Rodney was obviously capable of operating the shuttle without her help. He said, "I'll come with you.

She nodded, relieved, and started back into the passage. John followed her, Teyla with him. The passage led into a lock that apparently connected it to the base ship. It was open, but John stopped, lifting a brow.

The shuttle apparently fit into the base ship in such a way that its deck was at a right angle to the base ship's deck. The hatch was looking down the base ship's open central core; straight down, so it appeared as if they should be falling down it already. "Just step through," Trishen said, noticing his hesitation. "The artificial gravity adjusts automatically."

"Okay," John said, figuring he had a fifty-fifty chance of breaking his neck. He stepped through and suddenly found himself standing on the small stair platform, clinging to the railing.

Teyla lifted her brows. "That is clever."

"Yeah." John grimaced, waited until Trishen had stepped through, and gave Teyla a signal to guard the hatch area. She nodded and he followed Trishen down the stairs that spiraled around the core area.

Compartments opened off the platforms on each level, much like the shuttle, only on a slightly larger scale. John realized he could hear a high-pitched buzz from below. Trishen had said the other Wraith were trying to break in. "Is that from the outer hatch?"

She said, "Yes, I think they're using some sort of cutting tool to get into the control panel, but that should take them some time." On the next to lowest level, she stopped at another control area, bigger than the shuttle's cockpit, with more of the floating displays. She started hitting control pads, and said, "Main console to shuttle. I've turned on the internal comm throughout the ship, so you can-

Rodney's voice on a loudspeaker interrupted, "Notify you when I'm ready, yes, yes, get to work."

John left her to it, going down half a level until he had a view of the hatch for the main airlock. The buzzing noise from outside the hatch didn't get any louder, but it was still making John's nerves twitch. He listened to Rodney and Trishen talking back and forth on the comm, mostly incomprehensible techno-babble. It sounded like Rodney had finished converting the shields to a cloaking device and they were just waiting on the drive build-up.

Then Rodney's voice said abruptly, "Wait, what the hell is that?" John tensed, pushing to his feet and stepping back onto the platform. Before he could ask what the hell was what, Rodney said, "Trishen, do you have a view of the outer hatch?"

Alarmed, Trishen hit a control. One of the display bubbles expanded to a view of the outside of the ship. The vantage point looked like it was up on the shuttle, and the image was blue-gray, as if it was from a nightvision scope; the daily eclipse must have started.

There was a cluster of drones and a few male Wraith around the ship. Three of the drones had strange tools about the size of an AT-4 Rocket Launcher, and were just pointing them at the outer hatch. The beams came on, so intense the glare washed out the image. Sounding appalled, Trishen said, "They're cutting the hatch out!"

Rodney's voice was sour. "They must have heard the drive build-up and decided not to bother trying to take the ship intact. That's typical."

John ducked back to the steps to look at the outer lock from this side. Even from here, he could see a hot blue glow growing in the center of the hatch. Oh, hell. "Hurry it up, guys, they're burning through the inner hatch!"

He heard Rodney ask Trishen, "Can you seal off that section? Oh, at what point does that make sense!" John guessed the answer had been "no." Rodney added urgently, "Then keep going, overload everything-"

The blue glow was getting larger. The hatch was steaming, giving off a sharp odor far too close to burning flesh for John's comfort. He moved back up a few steps, crouching to keep the P-90 aimed at the outer hatch. The metal of the whole central core was starting to tremble and over the whine from the cutting tools he could hear a muted reverberation that had to be the overloaded drive. Trishen pushed away from the controls, saying, "It's done! We have to get away-"

John saw the blue glow of the cutting beams suddenly expand, the black hatch material turning white with heat. He yelled, "Go, now!" The hatch exploded inward, and John fired down at the first of the drones that slammed through the white-hot remnants. The first two drones collapsed in the lock; they would regenerate in a couple of minutes but right now they were dead weight, slowing the others down, forcing them to clamber over the temporarily inert bodies.

Trishen bolted out onto the platform, then started up the steps.

John fired at the hatch again, then pushed to his feet and darted up the stairs after her. At the next platform, he turned to fire down, catching a male Wraith just as it stuck its head out into the central well to look upward. It fell back and John charged up the stairs.

From above, Teyla fired her 9mm down the central well. John reached the shuttle connection platform and backed toward the hatch, firing to cover Teyla as she drew back from the railing. Then something hit him, sending him staggering. The right side of his body went instantly numb, and he sagged, barely clinging to the railing; he must have been clipped with the edge of a stun blast. Teyla shouted in alarm, firing down the stairs, and John knew the Wraith were almost on them. "Teyla, get out of here!"

Then Rodney ducked out of the hatch and grabbed John's numb arm, hauling him across the platform.

Teyla emptied her second clip as John and Rodney reached the shuttle's hatch. Turning, she shoved both of them through. The gravity field grabbed them and John slammed into the shuttle's deck, Rodney landing half on top of him. John managed to turn his head in time to see Teyla land on her feet beside him. A Wraith snarled up at them from the platform directly below, just lifting its stunner to fire. John awkwardly scrabbled for the P-90 with his good arm, but Rodney and Teyla were yelling, "Now, now!"

The hatch slid shut.

John let his head drop back. "Yeah, that was close," he gasped. "Thanks, Rodney, Teyla."

"Close?" Rodney shouted incredulously. "Shut up! And you're welcome!"

Teyla let her breath out in relief, sliding down the wall to sit on the deck. She looked at the sleeve of her jacket, where there was now a hand-shaped rip in the gray material. "Very close," she said with a rueful grimace.

Too close, John thought. A little less momentum, and that thing would have had her. He heard muted banging on the lock, and tried to shove himself upright. "We need to get out of here-" He felt a thump through the deck that sounded a lot like a docking clamp releasing, then a gentle push as the shuttle lifted away from the base ship.

Trishen's voice called from a nearby compartment, "We're away!"

"That's nice." Rodney shoved himself into a sitting position, planting an elbow in John's numb side in the process. He called back to her, "Are we cloaked?"

"Yes, it seems to be working!"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Seems to. Oh, that's fine. We'll know for certain when the scout ship starts shooting at us." He yelled, "Is the base ship blowing up?" He added in a lower voice, "Please, please blow up."

Somewhere below the hatch, muted by distance, thin air, and the shuttle's shielding, John heard an explosion.

Rodney slumped in relief. "Thank you."