The Chosen

Chapter Thirteen

Their arrival in Nemst was met with panic, which wasn’t surprising. Over the past few hours the townspeople had weathered the Wraith ghosts and then the Darts’ deadly harvest. The remaining populace was now desperate to be evacuated into the Citadel.

Rodney stepped out of the transport and directly into a throng of people shoving back and forth. A claustrophobic’s nightmare, he instantly classified the situation. Sheppard, an engineer, and a couple of warriors had accompanied him on this bound-to-be-fun expedition, but already he was losing sight of them in the crowd.

“Save us. We beg of you!”

“Everybody calm down!” the Major shouted, rather ineffectually. A sharp whistle through his fingers produced the desired result. Rodney blinked. If Sheppard could do that, why had he instead fired his weapon when they’d showed up on this damned planet in the first place? God, but he hated questions without answers.

“We can take you to the Citadel, but we need a few of your engineers and blackwater collectors to help us mount a defense against the Wraith.”

Voices rose from the crowd. “It is not safe here. We must leave at once.”

“If we don’t get the blackwater flowing, no one’s going to be safe, in the Citadel or anywhere else!” Rodney watched the villagers hesitate. Then one stabbed a finger in the direction of his Shield.

“He is of the Chosen.”

“For the forty-eighth and final time, we’re not Chosen. We’re…” I don’t believe I’m about to say this. “Genes. We can use the Shields to repel the Wraith attacks, and all I need are a few people to show me the fortifications you’ve built against the blackwater leak.”

After a moment, a man made his way to the front, with three more following him. “We will assist.”

“Thank you.” Another couple of people trickled out of the crowd and headed in their direction while everyone else began to push toward the transport again.

“Hey! We’re going, all right?” Sheppard swore. “Just stop shoving before you trample somebody.” His request went unheard as the townspeople piled into the transport. Raising a helpless shrug toward Rodney across the mass of humanity, he called, “See you later.” His determined gaze refused to acknowledge the fact that ‘later’ was an uncertain concept at best.

“Yeah. Later.”

The transport and its terrified occupants soon swallowed the Major up. Rodney followed the warriors outside, his ragtag team of eight volunteers hanging back to listen to him explain the plan.

The sounds of Darts screeching toward them punctured the night. Unable to see them, it was by auditory cues that he recognized several peeling away from their pack, presumably trying to avoid the newly established EM field generated by his and Sheppard’s Shields. And not entirely successful in the attempt, as two spiraled uncontrollably toward the ground beyond a nearby hill. A few seconds later, a double explosion sounded in the distance. Probably the pilots activating their self-destruct mechanisms. Good. Two fewer life-sucking goons to worry about.

“What news have you?” one of the Nemst workers asked. “Why does the Enclave burn?”

“There’s been a coup d’etat inside the Citadel,” Rodney replied shortly, without taking his eyes off the worn path under his feet. The fewer times he had to recount this particular tale, the better. “The Chosen — who were not, incidentally, running things as you’d been led to believe — are also dead. That’s why we’re all fairly dependent on this plan to work. So if you wouldn’t mind picking up the pace a little?”

The townspeople obeyed, to his surprise. The dire implications of the Chosen’s fall seemed to bolster their resolve. “We will do what we must,” another worker said.

The path wasn’t long, fortunately. Nemst was actually situated on a plateau at the top of Black Hill. The river off to their left was running at a reasonable speed, having just exited the mountains on its way down toward the Citadel. Even in the dead of night, the twin planets rising from the east, while themselves cast in shadow, offered about the same level of illumination as a full moon on a clear night back on Earth. Helpful, that. This would be dicey enough without the additional risk of working with oil under the light of open flames. Although he’d thought to bring a flashlight, it certainly wouldn’t have lasted the night.

One of the engineers pointed toward a large waterwheel. “This drives the bellows for the forge,” he explained. “Our foundry makes the finest wrought iron in Dalera. It also drives the pumps to fill the barrels with blackwater and drinking water.”

“Be sure to put that in your travel brochures.” Rodney was growing increasingly edgy. He looked back over his shoulder and studied the snow-capped mountains, then glanced at the ground. Black Hill appeared to be an upward protrusion of shale, beneath which was a large deposit of oil. Shifting his gaze to examine the geography of the river, he worked through the situation aloud. “So when the water is high, it floods this area and cascades down the cliff to join the main body of the river. Then there’s a series of short rapids before it widens and splits into the North and South Channels that surround the Citadel. Right?”

Of course it was right, and the general nodding of the others confirmed it. His primary concern was the amount of oil that would be required to pull this off. And the risk of toxic fumes blowing off unlit crude oil on the South Channel, directly into the Citadel. All right, two primary concerns.

In his borderline manic state, the entire situation was beginning to feel disturbingly Monty Pythonesque. In fact, there were three primary concerns. The wind had to pick up in order for the oil ignited on the North Channel to blow away from the Citadel.

When he finished explaining the plan, one of the engineers reassured him. “This time of year, the spring floods create an embankment at the entrance to South Channel, which is always silted and slow flowing. The largest volume of water flows along the North Channel, so most of the blackwater will also flow there.”

“All right. That’s good. That’s a start. Second, we need enough oil — blackwater — to sustain the fire.”

“I believe this will be likely.” The engineer drew his chapped lips into a thin line. “In ages past, barbarians like Gat who controlled the city dug tunnels deep into the rock to collect blackwater to fuel their forges. The tunnels have caused the cliff to fracture in places. If a crack widens too far, the river is poisoned with the blackwater that spills out. Repairing the leaks has been constant and difficult work for many years. If we were to break through one of the patches, it is likely that a section of the cliff face will collapse.”

“And there’s a lot of blackwater behind it? And by a lot, I mean — well, a lot?” At the engineer’s nod, Rodney exhaled. Coming close didn’t count with this kind of thing. If they broke into the cliff face, there would be no way to seal it back up again. Still, with the added control provided by the weirs and dam, he’d definitely rather deal with the possibility of too much oil than too little.

“And if the blackwater runs dry as a result?” another man demanded. “We will have no way to support ourselves when all this is over.”

A biting remark was on the tip of Rodney’s tongue, prompting him to point out that post-attack revenue would be an issue only if they survived the Wraith culling in the first place. In a stroke of diplomacy that felt inherently atypical, he chose another line of thought. “You’ve got the lake. What’s it called? Quickweed? There’s little doubt that it’s proof of a vast oil field in this area. Trust me, on my world, people would sell their own mothers for that land. After Black Hill is breached and a few years of floods wash the area clean, the Citadel’s blackwater problem will probably go away, while you can still go on collecting the stuff via shallow wells and those pumps you’re using to supply the city with water.”

With every step across Black Hill, his ever-expanding mental checklist of things that could possibly go wrong was, Rodney reasoned, the result of basic paranoia, nothing more. It was a perfectly natural response to impending doom. After the past few months, he was getting accustomed to it. There was no cause for panic here. Really.

God, I hope this works.

The villagers moved with admirable efficiency, hitching a rope to a pulley system anchored at the top of the cliff. While the rest manned the ropes, two engineers rappelled down the escarpment in search of a suitable patch to exploit. Rodney opened his mouth to call out instructions, but quickly realized that there was no need. Their system was low-tech, but they had a solid grasp of the mechanics. It wasn’t long before they’d chiseled a number of well-placed holes in the patch, which as far as he could tell had been fashioned from some sort of bitumen, and secured strong ropes to the timber framework that held the patch in place. The pulley took up the slack in the ropes just as the two engineers scrambled back up over the top of the cliff.

A tense silence fell when the ropes grew taut. Then, before his nerves could snap, he heard the telltale crack of the timber and felt a deep rumble underfoot. Rodney’s initial rush of elation was swiftly replaced by a sense of dread. This was a serious rumble.

He had a number of utterly justified phobias, but heights wasn’t one of them. Moving closer to the cliff’s edge, he glanced over. “Oh, damn…Get back!” But it was too late. The ground beneath his feet abruptly collapsed, and he fell backward into the darkness.

“Well, we’re here now, all right? So if you’d quit griping, we can save—” John was highly tempted to say ‘your asses,’ but checked his frustration and, offering his most winning smile, finished, “All of you.”

“You say that now!” someone screamed. “But my husband is dead because the Chosen did not come.”

It was the same story everywhere they’d been. Every village — and there were dozens of them — had suffered from the Darts. When John managed to calm people down enough to tell him exactly when the attacks had taken place, the pattern became chillingly clear. The Wraith had spent the last months testing the Daleran defenses. Sure, some of the Darts had gone down when Kesun transported into a village and an EM field suddenly activated. But John would bet good money that, by now, the Wraith had gotten the timing pretty much figured out. The second an EM field had activated over a village, it meant that Kesun had transported in.

During previous cullings, the Chosen had worked in groups, with at least one remaining behind in each village while the other evacuated everyone to the Citadel. With only Kesun evacuating villages this time around, the Wraith had figured out that they had at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes to cull a village after the first group was evacuated. In turn, Kesun, and now John, had learned that there was no point in going back to a village a second time, because, by then, almost everyone had been taken. And that had, naturally, reinforced the Wraith tactic of waiting until the first group had gone, then descending on the remaining villagers like a pack of sharks.

Worse, in the last few hours, the Wraith had discovered that the Citadel was now serving up a free buffet.

Well, not quite free. More Darts fell out of the sky every time Ford, Ushat, and Yann managed to locate more Genes and get them established with Shields in the Stations. Problem was, John had no idea of the range of each Shield’s EM field. And he had a sinking feeling that the Wraith did and were finding safe flight corridors between what amounted to unconnected islands of protection.

Kesun’s words came back to him in full measure. The burden of responsibility, the burden of choice. Who lived and who died. Maybe it wasn’t quite that direct, because one of the great many things John didn’t know was which village the Wraith would target next. But in the end, it came down to knowing that anyone he couldn’t cram inside one of the transports was just not going to be there when he came back.

The first time, a woman had actually thrown her baby across the heads of the crowds and into the transport, while others thrust their children forward even while he was trying to close the doors. And the longer he delayed, the longer it would take him to get to other villages to save more.

He’d seen the look in that mother’s eyes before; too many times, too many places. All he could do was shut off his emotions and save those he could. Someone, at least, had caught the baby. The mother had not been there when he’d come back. It was then that he’d figured out the Wraith’s strategy and began formulating a defensive plan.

The first part involved sending Genes in pairs to the villages. Similar to when he and Rodney had transported into Nemst, one Gene stayed in the village to maintain EM coverage, while several return trips were made to the Citadel. They wouldn’t have time to wait for stragglers, but instead of evacuating villages at random, he’d begun with those closest to the Citadel. As the night wore on, that would hopefully give more people time to arrive from distant settlements to the outlying transports.

He wondered how Rodney was faring. The plan sounded straightforward enough, but John knew better than most how plans could go south in a hurry.

Someone grasped Rodney’s shoulder with dislocating force, and yanked him back onto solid ground — which was a relative term. One step ahead of the shifting earth, he clambered across to the stable part of the hill, the engineers scattered around him.

That had been entirely too close for his liking. He nodded his thanks to the guy who’d saved him, a huge bear of a man who introduced himself as Artos. The others gave a few weak, nervous chuckles.

From their vantage point, Rodney couldn’t see the oil cascading into the river, though he could hear a voluminous rush of liquid. What he could see was the point at which the river bifurcated into channels. He waited, knowing that it would take several minutes before the oil came into view.

The twin planets rising in the night sky reflected a harsh alien light on the surface of the water. He looked out across the hill and found the northern side of the Citadel cast in the same eerie hue. It was attractive, in an oddly stark way. He’d never been much for subtle shades, in anything.

Rodney’s momentary illusion of peace was obliterated when a squadron of Darts silhouetted themselves against the faces of the planets. An instinctive flare of dread dissipated as his fingers brushed the Shield fastened to his belt. He and the engineers were under the EM field — they were safe. The same couldn’t be said of the Darts’ targets. The menacing craft dived low, a series of beams sweeping across the fields.

Dealing with the Darts was a new experience, it occurred to him. Various Marines had recounted the Wraith attack on the Athosian settlement. Teyla had also described the way the blinding light emanated from the Darts to harvest any human in their path. The details had been noted in Rodney’s mind, duly but with unavoidable detachment. Now, as he watched the beams play across the land, the immediacy of it all gripped him with a cold hand. People were being harvested out there, right under his gaze, and the only thing that stood between the rest of the Daleran population and a similar fate was his plan.

A shout of triumph from the engineers tore his focus away. Rodney looked down at the river and noticed that the light reflecting off its surface had changed. The agitated froth that had previously been a constant had vanished beneath the weight of the oil, and the water now reflected a dark rainbow in the night-light. As ordered, there was a gigantic oil slick heading for the Citadel.

There had to be something unhealthy about the euphoria he felt at having caused a colossal oil spill. At least out here he wouldn’t have Greenpeace knocking on his door.

The oil flowed quickly down to the point where the river diverged. The immense shadow cast by the Citadel blocked his view of the South Channel. Fine, but why wasn’t he seeing the North Channel darken with oil? There’d been plenty of time for it to flow to that point. “What’s going on?” he called toward the engineers. “Where’s the blackwater?”

The guy who’d saved him squinted into the distance, and his face slumped in defeat. “Look,” he said, pointing to the channel entrance. “The way is blocked.”

“No, that can’t be. It can’t!” Rodney peered down at the mouth of North Channel. It was obstructed by debris, which forced most of the water and virtually all of the oil to divert south.

Of course. Because the cosmos so obviously enjoyed taunting him.

Aiden wasn’t thrilled with the idea of leaving Lisera alone in one of the old Chosen’s homes. Well, okay, it wasn’t exactly like she was alone. A couple of warriors and some of the walking wounded who’d been in the mob would be there to look out for her.

The Station, a tall building the size of a medium hotel, had been ransacked during the rioting, but what remained of the interior offered evidence enough of what it must have been like. The burned and shattered vestiges of luxury made him think of the grand staircase of the Titanic, once designed to sit far above steerage but now resting at the bottom of the ocean just the same. He could see why the commoners resented the Chosen. They had sure lived well. But then Yann reminded him that the Chosen hadn’t actually lived here for several generations. Instead, one of the city’s chiefs had taken over. “Supposedly because the Chosen ordered them to do so,” Yann growled. “Fools that we all were, we took the barbarians at their word.”

“Didn’t anyone think to say something to Kesun?”

“Yes. But it is only now that I understand his reply, that we must all return to the ways of Dalera. I thought he was giving his blessing for such actions. In fact, he was stating the only truth that matters.”

This Station was becoming a makeshift hospital as well. The lady they’d met in the markets, the one Lisera called an apothecary, had taken refuge there when the warriors kicked everyone out of Sanctuary Hall to make room for incoming evacuees. Aiden had left Lisera with most of the supplies they’d recovered, to help the apothecary treat the injured as best she could. Apparently the local equivalent of doctors were hard to come by, although word had gone out for any healers to make their way there.

“I don’t think it was wise to leave Lisera to be cared for only by warriors and merchants,” Yann said as they walked. “I should have stayed with her.”

Great. Aiden felt so much better. Not that he would have been all that comfortable with Yann staying behind, either. Lousy choices all around. “Yeah, well, we need you to round up the rest of your rebel pals and make sure they’re protected.”

Yann spun around to face him. “Less than twenty of those that I knew partook of the potion before Balzar’s men wrested it from them.”

That made Aiden pause. “I thought Ushat took care of Balzar?”

“Ushat and his warriors killed only to defend themselves and the Chosen. Gat and many of the chiefs were killed, but Balzar is a coward. He would have run and hidden in the sewers.”

“So the dozen Genes we found hiding inside the transports near the bridges are probably all we’re going to find.” The men had thrown away their recently acquired Shields, and it had taken some convincing to get eight of them to go with the warriors to the Stations that the Major had identified, and for the others to accept new Shields and help in the evacuation of villages. They’d become a little more cooperative once it was apparent that the panic in the streets was beginning to settle down. Word was spreading that the Atlanteans had a plan that could save everyone. Instead of killing each other, the mobs patrolling the streets began to focus their aggression on making sure that the pilots of downed Darts didn’t live long enough to become a problem.

Being with Yann, who carried a Shield, meant that Aiden wasn’t getting spooked out by the usual Wraith tactics. Still, while moving around the Citadel between the transports and the Stations, they’d stumbled across several desiccated bodies. Not every Wraith was being dispatched. Just as troubling, not everyone in the Citadel was setting aside their differences. There was a lot of deep-seated animosity in this place, generations’ worth of resentment that, having been ignited, weren’t about to be extinguished by a common cause. Teyla was right. When people lost everything and everyone they’d ever cared for, long-term planning didn’t enter into the picture. For many, the short-term goal wasn’t survival but reprisal.

Aiden thought about the de facto government that had developed in this place, and wondered what would replace it if the society survived. Political leadership, in any of its forms, had never really wowed him. He’d found the military’s clear and unequivocal chain of command an easier structure to accept. You did as you were told, and you expected those under you to do as you told them. That was the underlying code that made everything work and guaranteed that others would be watching your six just as you watched theirs.

“Look out!” Ushat shouted, knocking Aiden out of the path of an airborne axe flying from the shadows of an alleyway.

The axe’s owner was a guy who smelled like the cell that Aiden and Teyla had recently inhabited. Suddenly, he, Yann, Ushat, and the two warriors with them were surrounded by a mob of about fifteen Daleran men. Surrounding them was a bunch of women who looked like refugees from the Salem witch trials, egging them on. “Kill the Chosen for failing to protect us! Butcher their warriors. Behead them all!”

Rodney cursed as he slipped over yet one more jagged piece of prehistoric shale. According to Artos or Amos or whatever his name was, a multitude of tiny animals lay trapped within the layers of the ancient marine bed. Fossils. He was talking about fossils to Viking engineers. “You do realize that blackwater — oil — is composed entirely of countless billions of small animals that perished here several million years ago?”

“You mean, even before the time of the Ancestors?”

Before he snapped an ‘of course’, Rodney realized that it was not inconceivable that the Ancients had actually inhabited the planet for millions of years. He settled on a curt “Probably,” and concentrated on finding a path through the rock while trying not to slice his ankles open any more than he already had.

The point where the river divided came into view, and Artos paused. “There.”

There indeed. What the man meant to convey with that word, Rodney surmised, was that they were once again screwed.

The wreckage of two Darts, probably the ones they’d heard earlier, had plowed into the cliff overlooking the entrance to the North Channel. The impact and ensuing self-destruct sequence had collapsed most of the cliff face into the waterway. And wasn’t that just one more reason to hate those soulless creatures with the heat of a supernova?

Artos’s gaze flitted back and forth between Rodney and the North Channel. “It is not completely impassable,” he said, hesitant. “Perhaps the blackwater will still light.”

“Now is a singularly bad time to try relying on optimism.” There was some water getting past, true, but it was mostly at depth. Only a thin layer of oil trickled over the top. “The blackwater layer needs to be several millimeters thick to even ignite, let alone give us the sustained burn that we’ll need.” Recognizing belatedly that a millimeter was a foreign concept to these people, Rodney held up his thumb and forefinger at an approximate distance to explain.

The group of engineers traded despondent glances. It was evident to all that they couldn’t possibly clear enough of the wreckage from the channel in time to do any good. Even if they could, the momentum of the river was firmly on the southern side now, and it wouldn’t be easily or rapidly diverted. Time to shift gears once again. Trouble was, Rodney was running out of gears.

“This is getting a little old,” Aiden muttered. The first few times they’d been confronted by mobs, he’d managed to scatter them by taking a page from the Major’s book and firing a short round from his P-90 into the ground or over their heads. But this gang wasn’t backing down.

Behind him, Ushat blew a couple of short notes on his horn. While Aiden would have given a lot for a working radio, the horns had proved to be surprisingly efficient, using a set of calls that the Major had described as a simplified Morse Code.

The present signal was one Aiden now recognized as ‘under attack’. The response was immediate. They were only half a block from what had become their adopted Command Center, the City Hall-type place with all the maps. About twenty warriors appeared at one end of the alley. A batch of Teyla’s new ‘recruits’, mostly fishermen, builders and blacksmiths whom she was helping prepare for the ambush, appeared from the other end. Before the attackers had a chance to vanish back into the sewers, Teyla signaled the rookies to pounce on them with well-placed nets. Two who tried to escape down a narrow alley were brought down by bolas.

“Wow.” Aiden grinned, lowered his weapon and smiled approvingly at Teyla and the recruits. “Nice work.”

“They have learned to wait until given the order to strike.” Ushat looked impressed as well. “That is strong work for untrained warriors.”

Yann leveled a hard stare on him. “Unlike the ‘trained’ warriors, those of us who live outside the Citadel have been fighting the Wraith for weeks now.”

Well, there went that team-spirit moment. Aiden opened his mouth to head off the coming argument, but was interrupted by another warning call from the nearby Station. The sound abruptly halted.

Yann’s expression darkened. “Lisera!”

Wordlessly, they charged toward the building.

Arriving only minutes after the aborted signal, they found the place had been plunged even deeper into chaos than before. The bodies of the apothecary and the three warriors were strewn across the floor, hacked into pieces. Lisera’s terrified screams sounded from above, and Aiden felt a momentary surge of relief. The screams told him that she was still alive.

With surprising agility given the amount of armor he’d taken to wearing, Yann bounded up the stairs. Teyla was right on his heels. Ushat turned to his men with a grim command. “Search the building for those who have done this.” Receiving a chest-thumping salute in acknowledgement, he followed Aiden up the steps.

When they neared the top, Yann showed no sign of slowing down. “Hold it!” Aiden hissed. The merchant’s eyes dropped to Aiden’s weapon, which he’d already brought to bear. For once, Yann actually listened and came to a halt, his features conflicted as Lisera’s hysterical screams continued. Those weren’t screams of pain, though, but rather—

Teyla must have recognized it at the same moment, because she ran ahead of Aiden. Rounding the corner into the apartment, he saw Balzar and a trio of seriously ugly brutes. They’d pinned Lisera to the bed, leaving no question as to their intent.

Before Aiden could stop him, Yann went for Balzar at full speed and laid him out with an NFL-caliber tackle. The other three dropped Lisera and spun toward their new adversaries. “Stop!” Aiden yelled, not surprised when they ignored him and picked up their axes. A warning round from his P-90 went into the ceiling, but that only served to incite them further. The Marine didn’t hesitate before putting two bullets in each man’s chest, felling them almost like dominoes.

He hated having to do that, but there wasn’t time to reflect on how bad the situation was, because Balzar was clearly getting the better of Yann. Ushat took care of it with the blunt end of his halberd, stepping into the motion with enough force to cripple the chief. Literally. Aiden knew the sound of breaking bones.

Scrambling to cover herself, Lisera’s breaths were coming in short, frantic gasps. Teyla gathered the tattered clothes and knelt beside the distraught girl, handing over her own jacket as well.

From the floor, Balzar jabbed a meaty finger at Yann’s Shield and spewed a string of words at him that could only have been curses. Yann glanced at Lisera to confirm that she was all right, then kicked at Balzar’s ribs, eliciting a howl.

“What have you done with the rest of the Gene potion?” demanded the merchant.

“You lied!” Balzar roared, spitting blood. “The potion does not work. I threw it to the rats.”

The loss hit Aiden with a gut-wrenching sense of despair. As he watched Lisera tremble in Teyla’s soothing embrace, he had to clamp down hard on the temptation to put a bullet in Balzar’s head. Twelve Genes. That was all he and Yann had been able to find. The Major had talked a good story in front of the engineers, but Aiden had seen the look in his eyes. They’d barely have enough Genes to protect the Citadel. And unless McKay’s half-assed plan worked, the Wraith would be climbing over the eastern wall in a matter of hours.