Homecoming

Chapter Twenty-six The Battle for Levanna

In the same instant, a red flare blossomed above the gate field. Valless’s mouth tightened, and he nodded to an aide, who lifted a brass flare gun from the litter of objects on the table below the parapet. He pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. A trail of smoke rose into the air, burst into a double ball of red light.

“Colonel Sheppard,” Teyla said, her voice very even. “I believe there is at least one cruiser in orbit.”

“We confirm that,” Diaz said. “One cruiser in stationary orbit.”

“Darts!” That was Culpepper, at the gate, and Valless opened his telescope again, trained it on the gate field.

“Plan A,” Sheppard said. “Ronon, you copy?”

“I copy,” Ronon answered. “We’re in position.”

His words were swallowed by the first shriek of the Darts. Sheppard ducked in spite of himself, saw the aides do the same, but Valless didn’t move, just lowered the telescope and looked up, shading his eyes. The balloons were working, Sheppard realized, at least on this first pass. Not for the first time, he wished they had SAMs to spare, but O’Neill hadn’t managed to get them that many to start with. He could hear the rattle of machine gun fire from the gate field, and then a short, heavier sound that had to be the Genii squadron.

“General, I need to get down there,” Sheppard said, and Valless nodded.

“Go.”

Sheppard took the stairs two at a time, swung his P90 to the ready as he hit the street. The balloons were still working, the Darts sliding around them or coming in too high to use the Culling beams with any accuracy, but he kept close to the buildings as he worked his way toward the gate field. The machine gun fire was almost steady, and a Dart shrieked overhead, trailing smoke. Sheppard ducked, more out of reflex than because it would do any good, and heard the ship crash somewhere to the west. Fire, he thought, we didn’t make any plans for fires. Valless must have done, he told himself, and hoped that the evacuation wasn’t supposed to cover that.

He skidded into the shelter of the Marine command post, tucked just at the edge of the built-up area outside the wall, to find Ronon crouching over a Genii radio, and Diaz staring intently into a periscope. Ronon gave him a nod, and Diaz glanced quickly over his shoulder.

“So far, so good, Colonel. Like you said, it looks like they were planning to Cull first, then attack. They weren’t expecting us to fight back.”

“We’ve taken out two Darts, and the Genii hit another couple,” Ronon reported. “Satedan Guard claims one.”

Out of a wave of thirty or forty, Sheppard thought, but nodded as though it was better news than it was. “They’re not risking the balloons yet,” he said. “They’re going to figure out that they can’t Cull pretty quickly and switch to landing troops, but until then, take out as many Darts as you can.”

“Yes, sir,” Diaz said, and a corporal repeated the order on the unit’s combat frequency.

“Do we still control the gate field?”

“Not really. We’re holding our positions, but — we had to pull back into cover, and we can’t get to the DHD.” Diaz peeked through the periscope again, and Sheppard moved to join him, peering carefully through the empty window frame. The binoculars gave him a skewed view of the gate field, the gate itself shimmering blue — the Wraith were holding the connection, standard practice, and even as he watched another string of Darts shot from the gate like bullets from a gun. Three of them pulled straight up, wheeling to make a pass at the field, and Diaz gave him an anguished glance.

“Permission to join them, Colonel?”

“Go.” Sheppard bit his lip, wanting to go with him, wanting to shoot back, and tightened his hands on the binoculars instead. There was another burst of fire, this from the the Genii, and a Dart pitched over, tumbling past the gate to land in the woods beyond the field. He took a deep breath, trying to get the picture straight in his mind — the Wraith here, at the gate, Marines and Genii and Levannans each in their positions, ready to spring Valless’s trap — and ducked again at an explosion close at hand.

“Dart down in the city,” Ronon said.

Sheppard touched his earpiece. “Teyla. Report.”

“I am at the Institute with Rodney.” Her answer was instantaneous, and in spite of everything Sheppard gave a sigh of relief. “We have seen two Darts crash in the city, but there are no fires yet. They are still avoiding the balloons.”

“Good.” Sheppard leveled the binoculars again. Not much longer, he thought. The Wraith weren’t going to keep sending Darts to Cull—

The gate shimmered again, releasing another flight of Darts, and behind them rolled four, no, five metal spheres that crackled with blue lightning.

“Diaz!”

The radio was filled with shouts of warning, and the spheres blew with a rippling crack, a force field sheeting like a hammer across the open space. Behind them came the drones, weapons lowered, energy already crackling from the staffs, and Sheppard touched his earpiece again. “Diaz, Culpepper, fall back. Fall back to position B.”

“Culpepper’s down, sir. This is Morgan.” A pause. “Falling back.”

“Roger that,” Sheppard said.

“We can hold them here,” a Genii voice protested, from Ronon’s radio, and Sheppard grabbed the microphone from the Satedan’s hand.

“That was not the plan. We’re not trying to hold the gate. Fall back!”

“Sir—”

“Fall back,” Sheppard said again, and put the mic aside. “Ronon, make sure they do it.”

He leaned back against the wall as the first of the Marines tumbled in, lifted his P90 to provide cover if they needed it. So far, it was all going according to plan—

“Colonel Sheppard,” Teyla said. “The Wraith have decided the balloons are not a threat. They are trying to cut them loose.”

“Damn it,” Sheppard said, under his breath, added, more loudly, “Roger that.” He stepped to the window again just in time to see a Dart sweep past, the rags of a balloon shredding from nose and wing. Even as he recognized it, the fabric fell free, and the Dart wheeled upward, scrambling for height. Sheppard fired at it, saw a tracer round ping home against the underbelly, but the Dart was gone again before he could get a decent aim.

He touched his earpiece again, adjusting channels. “General Valless! We’re losing air cover.”

“We see it.” Valless’s voice was surprisingly calm. “Colonel, I believe — yes, they are dropping drones behind our position. I’m sending Laecat’s men to meet them. Be ready.”

Where there was one, there would be more. Sheppard caught his lower lip in his teeth, wishing he knew the city better — but then, the Wraith didn’t know it, either. Nobody had that advantage here except the Levannans. He hit his own command frequency again. “We are commencing plan B. I repeat, we are now in Plan B.”

Ronon grinned at him over the radio, across a room suddenly full of noise and Marines. One of the older sergeants had things in hand, doling out ammunition with one hand, pointing for a corpsman to deal with wounded with the other, and Sheppard took a breath. The Wraith would be dropping more drones, trying to take them from both sides; Valless and the Satedans were waiting for that, and his job was to get his own people and the Genii to the hot spots, where their superior firepower would have the greatest effect—

“Landing in grid A5,” Ronon reported. His voice carried easily over the noise. “And grid J7, grid C6, and C5.”

“Ignore J7.” That was Valless’ voice, sharp and strong even in the unfamiliar medium. “That’s a decoy, they’re trying to draw us out. Colonel Sheppard, General Kolbyr has grid C5, please move up in support. Colonel Faber, please support General Chacier in grid A5.”

“Roger that,” Sheppard said. The Science Institute was in grid C3, and he was guiltily glad they’d been assigned that direction. “Diaz, Cul — Morgan, each of you take a squad. Third squad’s with me. Ronon, you have the reserve.”

He’d expected at least a token protest at that, but the Satedan just nodded.

“Right,” Sheppard said. “Move out.”

They left in staggered waves, first Diaz, then Morgan, and finally Sheppard, dodging through the narrow streets. It was easy to figure out where the Wraith were to start with: follow the sound of the Levannan muskets, a roll of fire punctuated by deeper booms that Sheppard guessed were the pepper pots. The Darts screamed overhead, forcing them to stay close to the walls and out of sight. There were a few balloons still flying, and Sheppard caught a glimpse of one tower crew trying to drag a replacement onto its rings, but they were swept away in a Culling beam, and the balloon sagged lop-sided against the tower’s edge, held by a tangle of lines.

And then they rounded a corner into a sudden sparkle of air, and Sheppard brought up his P90 just as a squad of Wraith materialized. The rest of the Marines fired with him, and the Wraith were held upright for a moment by the volume of fire. And then they collapsed, a dozen drones and a white-haired male, and Sheppard caught his breath.

“Nice work. Keep moving.”

After that, it was a confusion of house-to-house fighting, dodging from shelter to shelter, hoping to spot the Wraith before the Wraith spotted them. One of the Marines, a kid maybe nineteen, fell behind and was fed upon, shriveling to ninety in a second before the kid’s squadmate brought down the drone. Sheppard didn’t look back to see whether the kid was still alive; it was too late, regardless, and he waved the others forward. A while later he saw the squadmate back in the lead, streaks of sweat like tears on his dirty face.

They cleared the area around the Institute building, but the Darts kept coming, and the radio reported still more Wraith moving through the gate. The Genii were falling back, selling the ground dear, but they were almost back to the city wall, and if they got trapped there… Valless sent the Satedans in support, and Sheppard leaned against the arch of a doorway, trying to make sense of what was going on. There were too many Wraith in the city; they were spending too much time, too many men, to keep them under control. Somebody handed him a water bottle and he drank without thinking, handed it back half empty. The balloons had been a good idea, but the tethering points were too exposed, you couldn’t replace them under fire. Missiles would have been a great idea, but they didn’t have any—

He blinked hard, touched his radio. “Rodney. Are you there?”

“Of course I’m here. Where else would I be? Oh, and we’ve been attacked by the Wraith, too, and a very nice lady scientist got fed on—”

“Rodney,” Sheppard said, and there was silence. “Do you have any flares, fireworks, anything like that?”

“Why would we—” Rodney stopped. “They make the signal flares here. Why—”

“Can you shoot them at the Wraith?”

“Are you kidding?”

In spite of everything, Sheppard grinned. He could hear the indignation, could almost see Rodney’s glare.

“One, we can’t exactly aim them, they’re not like guns or missiles or even fireworks, they don’t have stabilizers. And, two, even if we could aim them, they’re not exactly going to damage a Dart—”

“I just want to scare them,” Sheppard said. “Clear the air over the city even temporarily. Can you get together a bunch of flares—”

“A ‘bunch’?”

“As many as possible. As many as you can shoot off at once. And keep shooting them until you run out.”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I think — yes. I see what you want. Yes, we can do it. Give me, give me fifteen minutes—”

“Make it ten,” Sheppard said. He thumbed the radio to Valless’s channel. “Sheppard here. I’ve got an idea.”

There was a little silence when he had finished, and then he could have sworn Valless laughed softly. “The Wraith are concentrating on the Genii positions. It seems they believe if they can overrun them, they’ll have the city at their mercy. And they may be right.” He paused. “I’ll send Kolbyr’s men and Chacier’s to their support, but not until you set off your — distraction. If we time it right—” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence. “When will you be ready?”

“Ten minutes,” Sheppard said, and suppressed the urge to cross his fingers.

“I will order my men to move when they see the flares,” Valless said. “Not before.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheppard said, and leaned out of the sheltering doorway. “Diaz! Morgan! Change of plan.”

They huddled in the archway together, Diaz dabbing gingerly at a shallow cut on his jaw, Morgan methodically fitting a fresh clip into his P90.

“OK,” Sheppard said. “The Wraith have got the Genii pinned against the city wall. General Valless is sending men to get them out, and with any luck drive the Wraith back to the gate. Morgan, you’re going to join them.”

“What about the Wraith in the city?” Diaz asked.

“Dr. McKay and the other scientists are arranging a distraction,” Sheppard said, “that should keep the Darts from dropping any more drones. I want you to wait for the signal, and then take out any Darts you can. After that, mop up any Wraith still behind the main lines. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Morgan said, and Diaz echoed him a heartbeat later.

“What kind of distraction, sir?”

Sheppard smiled. “You won’t be able to miss it.” He stood. “Give me five men, then head out. Don’t attack until the flares go off. Anything else?”

Morgan shook his head, and Diaz said, “No, sir.” He pointed, telling off men. “Smith, Alvarez, Rey, Nguyen, Jeleniewsi. You’re with Colonel Sheppard. The rest of you, follow me.”

Sheppard watched them jog off, touched his earpiece. “Teyla. You want to let us in?”

The Institute was quiet and dim, and smelled of the lamp oil that was the only light. All the windows were shuttered close, fastened with heavy iron bars, and the main door was sealed with a similar wedge that took two Marines to hoist back into place.

“I take it the Wraith didn’t get in that way?” Sheppard asked, and she shook her head.

“They came from the roof.” Teyla nodded to the young man who had accompanied her, one of the Satedan Guard. “Tarl spotted them, or we would have lost more people.”

Sheppard grimaced, but there was nothing to say to that. He followed her to the second floor workrooms, where McKay was stalking back and forth among bags of what looked like badly-made firecrackers. Sheppard winced at the sight — a spark, any spark, was clearly a very bad idea — and McKay glared at him.

“Well, this may work. Maybe. If we’re lucky. And this is the place they make the flares, not the flare guns—”

“Can you do it?” Sheppard asked.

“We can,” Teyla said, firmly.

“Then let’s go.” Sheppard reached for the closest bag, and McKay slapped his hand.

“We’ll do that. You need to make sure the roof is clear.”

“Don’t hit me,” Sheppard said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He looked at the Marines. “Follow me.”

They took the stairs two at a time, pausing in cover to check for Wraith, but the stairwell and the upper floors were empty. The roof was clear as well, and Sheppard touched his radio. “Teyla. You can bring Rodney up.”

“We are on our way,” she answered, and Sheppard gestured for the Marines to find what cover they could on the crowded rooftop. It had been used as an observatory, or at least that was what Sheppard assumed went in the odd turret by the edge of the stone rail, but at least the various projections offered some shelter. A Dart wheeled in the distance, but it didn’t seem to have spotted them yet.

The door opened again, and McKay dodged out, two bags of flares in his hands, shoulders hunched as he began jamming sticks and metal rods into the cracked stonework.

“Hey,” Sheppard began, and Rodney shook his head.

“You wanted fireworks, Sheppard, you’re going to get fireworks.”

“I wanted flares,” Sheppard said, under his breath. Several of the scientists had followed McKay, were fitting flares into weird, wide-barrelled pistols. “Actually, I wanted missiles…”

“You got flares,” McKay said. He finished fastening the last flare to a stick, took a spool of cord from one of the scientists. “This is quick-match, right?”

“Yes.” The man didn’t look up from his own work, tying together the strands of cord that ran from each of the flares.

“All right,” McKay said. In the waning afternoon light, he looked unexpectedly pale. “If you want them all to go off at once, you’re going to have to shoot some of them, too.”

Sheppard nodded to the Marines, who accepted flare pistols from the scientists. “OK.”

“We’re ready,” McKay said simply, and Sheppard nodded again.

“Do it.”

McKay put a lighter to the trailing fuse. The spark leaped along the lines of cords, faster than anything Sheppard had seen before, and the flares ignited in a ragged fusillade. A second later, Marines and scientists fired the flare pistols as well, and the sky above them boiled with multi-colored light. A Dart swooped toward them, obviously blinded, and Sheppard flung aside the flare pistol and brought up his P90. Beside him, a Marine and Teyla did the same. The Dart staggered and fell off sideways, smoke trailing from a wing. The pilot tried to correct, but the machine nosed over, went down in a crump of flame behind a nearby building. A second Dart wheeled toward them, and Sheppard fired again, saw it swirl away, heading for the gate. Another followed, and then another.

“They’re running,” he said.

“From this?” McKay had a singed spot on his jacket, and a smudge of smoke on his nose. “These are flares, they can’t do any damage—”

“They don’t know that,” Sheppard said. He reached for his binoculars, tried to find the Genii, but there were too many buildings in the way.

“You mean to tell me this was a complete bluff—” McKay began, and Ronon’s voice cut through.

“Sheppard. The Genii held. The Wraith are heading for the gate.”

Sheppard took a deep breath, let it out again.

“Let them go,” General Valless said. “We’ve won.”

“You were bluffing,” McKay said again. “You never bluff. It’s why you’re so lousy at poker.”

Behind him, Teyla was smiling. It was the same smile, relief and guilty release, that Sheppard could feel on his own face, and he met her eyes deliberately. She dipped her head, and Sheppard felt his smile widen. The team was all right, that was the first thing, the main thing; the team was all right and they’d actually won.

It took most of the rest of the day to sweep the city, digging out the last few Wraith drones who had been left behind, retrieving their own wounded and bringing them to the aid stations. Most of the Levannan women worked there, sure-handed from long practice, while another group brought out kettles and began to cook, the smoke of their fires sharp in the cooling air. Sheppard counted his own casualties — five dead, another handful wounded, mostly by flying chips of stone, no one missing — and began sending them back through the gate. A squad of Levannan infantry trotted past, axes on their shoulders, and he looked after them with a frown.

“For the dead Wraith,” Teyla said. He hadn’t seen her appear, but he was suddenly very glad of her presence. “They take the heads to be sure they will not regenerate.”

Sheppard winced, but nodded. It was a logical precaution, particularly on a world where medical science wasn’t that advanced. “Beckett’s here, he’s helping with the rest of the wounded. All ours are back in Atlantis.”

“Bad?” Teyla asked, and Sheppard shrugged. He didn’t want to think about the letters he would have to write, that would come later, wanted to rest secure in his own survival if only for an hour or two.

“Could be worse.”

Teyla gave her lopsided smile. “Very true.” She paused. “General Valless would like to speak with you, when you have a moment.”

Sheppard sighed. He knew what that statement meant from a superior officer. “No time like the present, I suppose.”

“There is coffee in the aid tent,” Teyla said. “Let us begin there.”

There was coffee, not good coffee by any standard, but hot and strong, with enough sugar to kill the lingering taste of cordite. Sheppard filled his mug a second time, watching the edge of Levanna’s larger moon creep above the horizon, and turned toward the city. He felt his stomach rumble, wondered if there would be food at headquarters.

“There is also soup,” Teyla said, but Sheppard shook his head.

“Let’s get this over with.”

The city gates were open wide, and the heliograph on the tower was clattering, black and white vanes flickering in a pattern almost too fast to follow. As he looked up, curious, the motion stopped, and a boy appeared, lantern in hand, to light the lamps at the end of each rod.

“They will be signalling the victory,” Teyla said, “and summoning the people home.”

“Yeah.” Sheppard looked over his shoulder as they moved on, seeing the lamps blur to streaks against the darkening sky.

There was not as much damage in the city as he had expected — oh, there were bullet marks in the stone, spalled divots brighter than the rest of the rock, and shattered windows and hanging shutters, but only once the scar where a wrecked Dart had started a fire. It had burned itself out, by the look of it, but Sheppard could just see the crumpled shell buried beneath the fallen beams. A little further on, they passed a pile of Wraith bodies — all drones, as far as Sheppard could see, and all headless. The heads had been carefully stacked on the opposite side of the road, and he looked away, grimacing. A cart trundled past, drawn by something like a short and shaggy pony; the bed was filled with Levannan bodies, laid carefully side by side, and Sheppard saw a withered female corpse among the uniformed men. One of the companions? Rodney’s lady scientist? There was no way to know. The man leading the cart spat as he passed the dead Wraith, but made no other gesture.

At the next square, there was lantern light and a confusion of voices, a gang of soldiers dismantling an improvised barrier, and General Kolbyr on one knee beside a stretcher. He looked up at their approach, and Sheppard was shocked to see his face streaked with tears.

“Goddamned idiot,” Kolbyr said. “Pompous, vainglorious, overdressed fool…”

The body on the stretcher still had curly black hair, but the rest of it was a gape-mouthed mummy in a gaudy gold-trimmed uniform. Sheppard winced again, not knowing where to look, and Kolbyr pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head. “Brave as they come — braver than brave — and not a brain in his pomaded head.” He wiped his hand across his mouth. “He couldn’t have waited a quarter hour. We’d have relieved them, and none of this would have happened.” He shook himself, hard, thumbed away a last tear. “Colonel Sheppard. You’re for the general?”

Sheppard looked down, embarrassed, and Teyla said, “He asked to see Colonel Sheppard, yes.”

“Right.” Kolbyr gave a last look at the stretcher. “Right, get on with it, take him away.” He found a tattered rag of a handkerchief, and blew his nose. “Tell the general I’ll be there as soon as I may.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheppard said, and they moved on.

“You are troubled?” Teyla asked, after a moment, and Sheppard gave her a sheepish glance.

“No. It’s just — generals don’t cry.”

“It might be better if they did,” Teyla said, with unaccustomed tartness, and Sheppard shrugged.

“Maybe. But those are the rules.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

Valless was still at the tower that had served as his main headquarters. The shutters were thrown back, and the main hall was filled with lamps and candelabra. Mirrors reflected the light back again, glittering from silver and gold lace and gilt furniture, and unaccountably Sheppard felt a fraction warmer. Someone shoved a glass into his hand, and he smelled the heavy local wine.

“Good work, Sheppard,” someone said — the balding general, Freyne — and Chacier nodded in either welcome or agreement.

“Thanks,” Sheppard said. “Sir. I had word General Valless wanted to speak with me?”

“Sheppard!”

There was a note in the voice that made Sheppard reach for his sidearm as he turned. Sure enough, it was the Genii colonel, Faber, stamping through the crowd of officers. A worried-looking aide hovered at his shoulder, struggling to keep up.

“Sheppard, I want a word with you.”

Sheppard made himself move his hand away from the pistol, forced an expression that might pass for a smile. “Sure. But you might want to keep your voice down—”

“I don’t care who hears me,” Faber said. “Where the hell were you when I called for support? If your men had come when I asked, there’d be a good dozen men alive right now—”

“Hold on,” Sheppard began, and there was a movement to his left.

“I held back the Lanteans,” General Valless said. He had changed his coat, Sheppard saw, and there was evening stubble showing on his long chin.

“At their advice,” Faber said. “They’d do anything to be rid of us—”

“Colonel Faber,” Valless said sternly. “I don’t need the Lanteans’ advice, and I don’t need you to tell me my business. This is Levanna, and this is my army. You and Colonel Sheppard are here under my command — that’s the agreement I have with both your governments, and if you can’t keep to it, you can get the hell out of here. I held back the Lanteans because you’d ignored my orders, refused to fall back when I ordered it, and got yourself in over your head. And you’re lucky Sheppard came up with a good idea because that’s what saved your ass. I’d’ve left you there.”

Faber’s jaw dropped, and Valless fixed him with a gimlet stare.

“So. Unless you have something constructive to say, Colonel, I’d suggest you remove yourself.” He turned without waiting for an answer. “Colonel Sheppard. If you please..”

“Sir,” Sheppard said, and followed him. He carefully didn’t look back until they had reached the map table at the far side of the room, breathed a sigh of relief to see the door close behind the Genii. That wouldn’t solve the problem — had probably made everything worse, really — but at least it was handled for the moment.

“Now, Colonel,” Valless said, and leaned over the table. “I just have a few questions.”

The few questions took another hour, and by the time they’d finished, Sheppard was hard-pressed to suppress a yawn. He felt a bit as though the little man had picked him up, shaken him hard enough to knock everything he knew into a heap on the table, then wrung out his brain a couple of times for good measure. But the conversation seemed to have pleased Valless, and the general dismissed him with thanks and another glass of wine. Sheppard drained it — he’d been talking for a long time — and then wondered if he’d made a bad mistake. But no: his feet were still steady under him, and there was Teyla, a couple of Levannan soldiers at her back.

“General Valless has offered us an escort back to the gate.”

“Good idea,” Sheppard said, and fell into step beside her.

The walk back seemed shorter, maybe because the darkness hid the damage that had caught his eye before. They went in silence, except for the soft exchange of watchwords as they passed the guard posts, came at last down the gentle slope of road that led to the gate field. The medical tents were still busy, canvas glowing, and there was a Marine detail at the DHD. Levanna’s second moon swung low in the sky, its horn just kissing the top of the gate. Its beauty was almost shocking, after the events of the day, and Sheppard shook his head. He didn’t have words, maybe there weren’t words, and Teyla touched his hand.

“Let us go home, John.”