The Inheritors

Chapter One Hyperion's Weapon

The sun rose over the icy sea, pale and watery, but at least today wasn't overcast. John Sheppard and Sam Carter stood on the balcony off the gateroom, both of them nursing steaming cups of coffee as they watched the light touch the tips of the towers of Atlantis, gilding them with light that slid down them like liquid as the sun lifted clear of the horizon.

"So do we have a plan for destroying this thing yet?" John asked.

"I'm still going with 'let's drop it into a sun,'" Sam said. "It may not be elegant, but it'll get the job done."

"Maybe a little overkill."

"Or maybe not," Sam said. "If Hyperion's weapon has a naquadah casing, it's going to be very hard to destroy by any other means. A large enough nuclear explosion would do it, but it would have to be a really big nuclear explosion. Not very practical."

"Let's not nuke our own planet." It didn't sound to John like much of an option.

"I'm with you there. If we drop the thing into the sun in front of a Wraith observer, that should take care of the problem. It would be nice to have a chance to study it first, but I'm not sure we have that luxury right now."

"I'm pretty sure we don't," John said. "Todd and his people are understandably unhappy about our having a weapon that could destroy all the Wraith. If we want their help against Queen Death — and whether we want it or not, we need it — we can't play around."

"I'm with you there, too."

John looked at her sideways. "Is General O'Neill?" He figured she'd talked to O'Neill after the official briefing. O'Neill had been wearing his best poker face, but if anyone knew what his true feelings were, it was Sam.

"You mean does he agree that we have to act on this quickly?"

"I mean does he agree that destroying the weapon is the right thing to do?"

"Do you?"

"Yes," John said after only a momentary pause. "I do."

"Because it might kill humans with Wraith DNA as well as the Wraith themselves?"

"That's what Alabaster says it'll do," John said. "I'm not sure I trust Alabaster any farther than I can throw her. But, okay, say you looked at it and said you thought it would just kill Wraith, and we said we were all willing to take that chance. Press a button, and, bang, no more Wraith. We win, right?"

"By committing genocide," Sam said. She looked grim, and John wondered if she was thinking about the Asuran Replicators. They'd had no other choice, and Sam had clearly taken a fierce satisfaction at the time in wiping out the Replicator threat once and for all, but that probably didn't make it easier to live with late at night.

"Yeah, let's not go there today. But is O'Neill in our corner?"

"Always," Sam said seriously. "But if you mean does he agree with you, yes, he thinks that destroying the device is the right thing to do."

"You talked him around?"

"I didn't have to. Apparently Woolsey was pretty persuasive." She didn't quite say go figure, but she didn't have to.

"You know, he's not so bad," John said.

"He used to be. I'm glad he's changed."

"Atlantis does that to people." John started to say Look at McKay, and then remembered with a twinge just how much Rodney had changed in the hands of the Wraith. He seemed more or less his old self, despite being left with shockingly white hair and the telepathic abilities of a Wraith, but having lived as one of the Wraith, actually led a deadly attack on Atlantis… it couldn't be easy to come back from that.

"I've noticed," Sam said, a little teasingly. He smiled crookedly in response. He'd be the first one to say that Atlantis had changed him for the better. The people he'd met there, and the city itself.

"As long as O'Neill's on board."

"He's on board," Sam said. "And he's in the best position to see the other reason we have to destroy this thing fast. The IOA," she added when he raised his eyebrows. "If they find out we had a weapon that could have destroyed the Wraith and didn't use it, Woolsey will probably lose his job, and Jack might not be far behind. Of course, he's been saying for years that it would be a relief if they finally kicked him out of the Air Force, so that he could dump it all on someone else and go fishing." Sam smiled a little ruefully. "But he doesn't mean it."

"So let's get this done," John said.

"Well, I'll need the device before I can destroy it," Sam said. "If you'll go get it from wherever you hid it…"

"You may as well come with me," John said, after a moment's hesitation that he decided wasn't entirely rational. "I'd rather not handle the weird Ancient device we don't understand any more than I have to. You don't have the ATA gene, so you're less likely to destroy all the Wraith in the galaxy by accident."

"Assuming that the user has to have the gene," Sam said. "We have found some Ancient devices that will work for anyone as long as someone with the gene turns them on."

"I didn't turn it on," John said, but he knew that sometimes touching Ancient machinery was all it took to make it respond to him, waking up eagerly in his hands. "I hope I didn't turn it on."

"We'll see, right?"

Sam followed him up a transport chamber and several sets of stairs to the catwalks where he usually went running with Ronon. Above them, a tangled grid of struts and roof supports extended up into the shadows.

"I keep some stuff up here," John said. "Just in case." He wondered if she'd call him paranoid, but she only nodded.

"You should see all the stuff we had stashed around Cheyenne Mountain," Sam said. "In case of a foothold situation, or the government being taken over by aliens, or something. We had a list of worst-case scenarios. A lot of them happened, eventually."

"And the important thing is that you were prepared."

"That's right," Sam said. He wasn't sure if she was joking or not. For that matter, he wasn't sure if he was or not.

"It's up there," John said. He scrambled up onto the rail of the catwalk, and then hauled himself up the jungle gym of struts and poles until he could reach the ledge where he'd stashed the weapon in between a spare Wraith stunner and a box of C4.

The stunner and the C4 were both still there, still securely duct taped to the ledge. In between them, the web of duct tape had been slit neatly with a knife.

"Damn it!"

"What?" Sam called from the catwalk below.

"The weapon's gone," John said. "Somebody got here first."

Ember had buried himself deep in the clevermen's section of the hive Just Fortune, in a laboratory sufficiently inconvenient of access as to remain largely private. Guide had ordered him to continue work on the human's retrovirus, and he was starting to make new progress. It would have been easier had he been able to recover more of the twinned humans that were so common on Lymours; among the Tenassan refugees had been a single pair, twin males, and they had agreed to serve the experiment, but with mixed results. He had fed on both, the treated and the untreated, and given the Gift to the latter when it was clear he would die, but the one who had been infected with the retrovirus now lay unconscious, his brother at his side, bathing his forehead in a pointless attempt to comfort. Ember believed he would wake, in time — his life signs were good — but he had hoped to create more resilience in the human subject.

The door slid back and he turned, frowning, to see a young blade, his hair wound into the heavy cords affected by the current crop of Dart pilots.

“Your pardon,” he said, his mind a thread of warmth on a cold day, “but Bonewhite has returned. He wishes to speak to all the masters of the hive.”

“What, now?” Ember frowned at his own question, recognizing its folly, but the blade bowed politely.

“He did say it was urgent.”

Ember glanced over his shoulder at the humans, the one brother still unconscious, the other lost in tending him, and decided they could safely be left. None of the lab equipment would respond to anyone not Wraith, even if they had understood its use. If he had been a master of sciences physical, or a weapons-master, it might have been different — the humans of Tenassa had been trained to understand the rudiments of those sciences — but this was safe enough. “Very well,” he said. “Lead on.”

He followed Thread through the twisting corridors, the blades' direct paths rather than the clevermen's, sanctioned by Thread's escort and Bonewhite's orders, and came more quickly than he had expected to the Hivemaster's quarters. The others were there before him, no surprise, and a stone-game had been laid out on the central table, Precision and the First-Watch-Captain, Ease, idly tossing dice for first-move. Hasten, the shipmaster and master of sciences physical, gave him a nod of greeting, and Ember gave a quick half-bow in return.

“And the Commander?” he asked, shading his thought to reach Hasten alone.

“Still on Atlantis,” Hasten answered. “Still treating with their queen.” He glanced toward the inner door. “I have heard that indeed Snow's daughter is alive —”

“That is true,” Bonewhite said, the door sliding closed again behind him. “And that is only part of the news I bring.”

“Snow's daughter alive?” Precision said. He had been born to this hive, unlike many of the others; for him, this was memory, not rumor and story. “Alabaster?”

“Alabaster,” Bonewhite agreed, and shaped an image of a young queen, a few years older than their own Steelflower, perhaps, pale of skin and scarlet of hair. “And her first-born.”

A son, Ember saw, and felt the same whisper of relief from the others. Bad enough to have two queens demanding Guide's loyalty, but at least they were spared the struggle that a daughter would have made inevitable.

“Guide believes the Lanteans rescued her as an earnest of the alliance they propose against Queen Death,” Bonewhite continued, “and he orders us to bring Just Fortune to orbit Atlantis, pledge in turn of our willingness to keep this bargain.”

There was a moment of silence, no one wanting to be the first to question. To cooperate now and then with the humans of Atlantis was one thing, Ember thought. Hives had always played groups of worshippers against each other, or, more subtly, pitted one human world against another, supporting one in order to hold another back, or to prepare it for a greater Culling. Even if the Lanteans were indeed the heirs of the Ancients, they were not those all-powerful beings; it was no worse to work with them than with any other of their species. But a formal alliance, bound under the signs of truce — a formal alliance directed against another queen — it spoke of desperation. But then, they were desperate: Death was determined to bring all the Wraith together under her command, and she had proven herself willing to do anything, even destroy her enemies' feeding grounds, to bring them to heel. It was against everything every Wraith knew in the crèche, unnatural and dangerous and to be fought with all their strength. Ember lifted his gaze, saw the same reluctant conclusion on Precision's face, and Hasten's, but Ease shook his head.

“This cannot be,” he said. “Hivemaster, the Commander goes too far. Surely our Queen would not wish to a true alliance —”

“She spoke of it herself,” Hasten said. “We all heard her.”

“She said she would treat with any who came under her peace,” Ease retorted, “and that is not at all the same as an alliance.”

Precision cocked his head to one side. “That is so.” He fixed his eyes on Bonewhite, who gave an infinitesimal shrug.

Hasten's mental voice was carefully controlled. "The Commander has every reason to see Snow's daughter safely returned to her people."

That way lay danger. Ember didn't look at him, and schooled face and mind to equal impassivity. The implication was unthinkable — that Guide would betray Queen Steelflower to place his untried, unproven daughter in her place — and yet such things had happened before.

Ease said, cautiously, “Guide was many years the humans' prisoner…." He let the thought die, and Precision let his handful of dice fall with a clatter. They fell all fours and threes, a House of Night, but Precision ignored them.

“For Alabaster's sake.”

There was another, deeper silence, and Ember said, “I do not know that story.”

“When we were attacked, and Queen Snow was killed, her daughter Alabaster had only just quickened with her first child.” Bonewhite's tone was scrupulously neutral. “At the queen's order, she took to a cruiser to escape, and disappeared. After the battle, we searched and found nothing, only the report of an enemy commander that her ship had exploded as it entered hyperspace. The Commander did not find this entirely convincing, and continued to search for any word of her or her ship and crew. A Worshipper brought word of a young queen dead on a human world controlled by the Genii. Despite the dangers the Commander was determined to investigate, and — was taken. The Genii commander held him prisoner for many years before he was able to make his escape.”

With the help of Atlantis's Consort, Ember knew, and was careful to mask the thought. That was the beginning of this road, this peculiar alliance. And the implications — Bonewhite was suggesting, so carefully that it could easily be denied, that Guide was not entirely rational about his daughter, might betray his true Queen to save her. He didn't think it was true, but once raised, the question could not entirely be put aside. He glanced around the room, saw the same knowledge in the others' faces, and took a careful breath. He was Guide's man: Guide had welcomed him, a lone straggler, hiveless, let him earn his place as chief among the clevermen.

“And what is our course, Hivemaster?” The words were not — quite — a challenge, but Bonewhite showed teeth anyway.

“We will do as the Commander bids, cleverman. I will leave Farseer in command here, and we will set course for Atlantis.”

Ember ducked his head, joining in the murmured chorus of agreement. There was an undertone of unease, however, the same doubts he had felt, but he could not identify its source. Oh, Guide, he thought, I hope you're not playing one game too many.

Radek had been in the control room since the last hour of the night shift. Strictly speaking, he wasn't supposed to be on duty, but since he'd been taken off the gate team and appointed Head of Sciences, he no longer worked a regular shift. Most of the time, this was a good thing, as it meant sleeping and waking in a pattern that actually matched the planet's day/night cycle. Sometimes, though, he was the person you called when there was a problem, even when that problem turned out to be nothing after all. He looked at the screen again, the display now showing clear, and glanced up again at the young airman who'd been assigned to this console.

"It looks as though it is normal ice build-up," he said, and did his best to keep any annoyance out of his voice. "You see there, on the exterior camera? Watch when I trigger the cameras." He touched keys as he spoke, and light flashed out into the murky water, plankton swirling like heavy snow. The camera panned down and sideways, at the limit of its turn, to show a craggy beard of sea-ice growing down from the edge of the platform. "That explains the unusual mass."

"Yes, sir." The airman was very fair, pale as a Russian, eyebrows and eyelashes almost invisible. "I'm sorry, Dr. Zelenka."

"Don't be," Radek said briskly, and meant it. "It is better to be concerned and find out that it is nothing serious than to ignore something you can't identify. Do that, and it will certainly be the Wraith. Or worse."

The airman managed a smile at that, as Radek had intended. "Yes, sir."

"Now," Radek said. "Are you familiar with the de-icing procedures?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then let us see you apply them." Radek slid out of the chair, letting the airman take his place, and watched as the younger man called up the program. He entered the parameters quickly and correctly, frowning over his screen, and Radek stepped back. The people he'd like to yell at were Dr. Merritt, suspiciously busy at his screen, or possibly Sergeant Trin. Either one of them should have recognized the pattern of the readings, and realized what they were seeing — they'd both been on Atlantis long enough to know to check for ice before sounding an alert.

Before he could say anything, however, a door slid back on the main floor and Sheppard emerged, heading purposefully for the main stairs. That rarely meant anything good, not at this hour of the morning, and Radek wasn't surprised when Sheppard nodded to him.

"Morning, Doc. Got a minute?"

"Of course." Radek let himself be herded out of earshot of the others in the control room, along the railing where they might be talking about something innocuous. Through the long windows, the aurora was fading to pastel wisps against a lightening sky, thin veils of purple to herald the dawn.

"We have a potential problem," Sheppard said quietly. "Can you access the security cameras without everyone knowing about it?"

Radek paused. "Yes. Or at least they won't know immediately. But once I have looked, anyone who comes after me will see the search."

"That's probably all right," Sheppard said, though he didn't look as though he entirely believed it himself.

"It would be helpful if you had a place you wanted me to look," Radek said. "And a time? A range of times? Or maybe you could just tell me what is going on."

Sheppard gave a crooked grin. "Oh, come on, Doc, nobody ever tells anybody that." He sobered abruptly. "An object has gone missing — a package, about so big." He mimed a rectangle half a meter long and maybe a hand's-breadth wide. "It was in a secure location, or at least what I thought was secure, but someone's taken it. I need to find it before anyone knows it's gone. And that means —"

Radek nodded. "I will keep my mouth shut, of course. Where was this — package — taken from?"

Sheppard looked over his shoulder. "Maybe we could take this somewhere more private?"

"Okay." Radek beckoned to Dr. Merritt, who rose reluctantly from his place. "You're all right with the underwater sensors now?"

Merritt nodded.

"Then I am going to get some breakfast. Next time, it would be better to check the cameras first."

"Yeah," Merritt said. "I'm sorry, Dr. Zelenka, I just forgot."

"Yes, well," Radek said. "Not again, please?" He nodded to Sheppard. "And I am at your disposal, Colonel."

"After you," Sheppard said.

After a moment's thought, Radek took him to one of the smaller system labs, not often used except when they were running full-systems tests on the city. He entered his passcodes and brought the consoles to life, then typed more commands to let himself into the security system. A map of the city blossomed on the screen, slowly rotating, and he looked over his shoulder at Sheppard.

"Okay," he said again. "Tell me where this thing was so I can start to look."

"Here." Sheppard touched one of the smaller southwest towers, just below the top chamber. "I'm guessing you don't have cameras there, right?"

"Right," Radek answered, entering coordinates. "But we do have cameras in the stairwells and outside the transport chambers. When did this happen?"

"That's an excellent question," Sheppard said. "Start with overnight."

"Yes," Radek said, typing that in, and grimaced at the size of the datafeed. "It will take me some time to go through this, Colonel —"

"I was afraid of that," Sheppard answered. "Look, if you find anything — radio me right away, got it?"

"Yes, of course," Radek said, "but it would help if you told me more about what I might be looking for —"

He stopped, realizing that he was speaking to empty air. "Of course not," he said, and frowned at the screen.

Luckily, they had already developed algorithms that could do the preliminary analysis of the footage, but it was still almost an hour before he spotted the first anomaly, and even then it was sheer chance that alerted him. The camera in the ZPM room showed that he had entered the area at 9:19 the previous night for a routine check of the subsystems' direct readouts. Radek touched keys to reverse the image, and played it again, watching himself enter the ZPM room and walk purposefully to the console. The problem was, he hadn't been anywhere near the ZPM room yesterday. That footage — he slowed down the image, zoomed in to look at his own left hand. Yes, it had been taken the day before, there was no question about it. That was the bandage he had gotten in the infirmary after he'd cut his left forefinger reaching into one of the less accessible parts of the Hammond's engines. It was a small cut, and he'd only gotten the bandage so that he didn't bleed on the more sensitive equipment. He'd taken it off again at the end of the day, and the only sign it had ever been there was a tender spot on his finger. At 9:19 last night, he'd been in the shower, not in the ZPM room, and that meant someone had tampered with the security footage.

Once he examined it more closely, it was easy to see what had happened. Someone had erased a section of the security record and replaced it with footage taken on an earlier occasion. It was easy enough to spot once you knew to look for it, and Radek quickly set up a search algorithm of his own to find the all-but-invisible anomalies. He wasn't surprised when the program found three more, and then another, but when it finished its search, he shook his head, swearing softly at the screen.

He touched his radio. "Colonel Sheppard."

There was a brief pause before Sheppard answered, and he sounded faintly breathless. "Yeah, Doc?"

Radek hesitated, not sure he wanted to make this announcement on an open channel. "Do you have a moment?"

"I'm kind of in the middle of something," Sheppard said slowly. "Can you give me the high points?"

"Yes," Radek said. "You asked me to let you know at once if I found anything. I have found gaps."

"Gaps," Sheppard repeated. "Crap."

"Just so."

"How many? And where?"

"More than twenty," Radek said, glancing at his screen. "I am not quite finished with the analysis, but — too many to blame on any normal malfunction. At least one of them occurred in your area of interest, and there are others throughout the city."

"Someone has edited themselves out of the security footage," Sheppard said.

"That is my conclusion," Radek said.

There was a moment of silence, and Radek guessed Sheppard was talking to someone off-channel. "Can you get me locations covered by these edits? Times, too, but the locations are the main thing."

"Yes," Radek said. "I'm already compiling that." He glanced at his screen, checking the progress bar. "Give me another ten, fifteen minutes, and I'll have it ready."

"Thanks," Sheppard said. "I'm sending Captain Cadman to collect it. Don't say anything to anybody else, all right?"

"Yes, I understand that," Radek said. "Though if you would tell me more, I might be able to help —"

He stopped, aware that he was speaking to empty air. He swore in Czech, glaring at the screen, and wondered what new disaster they'd stumbled into.