The Inheritors

Chapter Twenty Fire Ship

The cruisers were beaten back, at least for now, but the hives were still coming, their fleet splitting to divide the city from its covering ships. Lorne spun the Pride through 360 degrees, twisting as he went, but the hive's fire still clipped the weakened port shields. He rolled left, presenting the ventral shield instead, and winced as another shot slammed home. This was not the flagship, the Pride whispered; Hammond was engaged with Death's ship, the two orbiting each other, struggling for position. Hammond was faster, but her guns were doing little damage so far, and her own shields were suffering. Maybe two of us, Lorne thought. If I can break Pride loose, hit Death's hive, it'll give Carter a break, and maybe two of us can do some real damage.

The other hive swept in again, and he turned to meet it, presenting the strongest shields while Radim called the fire points. Blue light flamed across the hive's mottled skin, leaving scorch marks, but the damage was minimal. Lorne heeled away, and the Pride clamored alarm: too close to the damaged cruiser. Lorne winced as the shots struck home against his shields.

That was enough to give the hive another shot, and Lorne arrowed under it, presenting dorsal shields. Radim called for massed fire as they passed, but to no avail. The hive heeled up and over, fighting for advantage, and the Pride shuddered again as more shots struck home. Sorry, Colonel, Lorne thought. He wasn't going to be able to help — he had his hands full with this hive already.

The loss of the East Pier was like a stutter, the loss of a cylinder, a missed beat in the steady rhythm of the city's systems. John shifted in the chair, searching for a workaround, and felt the city interpret his movements, adjusting the other engines to compensate. Distantly, he could hear Zelenka explaining that the actual engine was damaged, and felt its absence like a missing tooth. They could maneuver, but it was clumsy, on the verge of overbalancing one way or another; better to stay on the present line, he thought, and try to get rid of the current attackers.

The city agreed, offering trajectories, fire points; he dismissed the ones that targeted the Darts, lobbed another pair of drones at the hive. It, at least, was standing further off, apparently chastened, but the cruiser was still closing, following the Darts down. The city offered firing solutions, the changing vectors flicking through his fingers. Not yet, not yet, he thought. Three drones, ready in their silos…. They clicked into place, stones ready to throw, fireballs to launch like some comic book hero –

Now, he thought, and the silos opened, the equations elegant on his skin, flicking the drones out into the night to meet the cruiser. Its pilot saw, swerved wildly, scattering Darts as they wheeled out of its path, but the drones kept coming, homing in on the weakness the city saw in the cruiser's frame. They hit, three strikes in quick succession, and the cruiser's hull gave way, fire eclipsing the stars. The shock wave rolled across the shield, shaking the city, but leaving no damage in its wake. John grinned, and felt the city's satisfaction echo his own.

Atlantis was fully engaged now, maneuver engines glowing beneath the curve of the lower hull, shields protecting the fragile towers, sealing in the air. A swarm of Darts surrounded it, one of Death's hives following in their wake, and trails of light rose lazily from the central spire, swooped out to dot the hive with blooms of fire. Guide watched, outwardly impassive, but cold fear crawled along his spine. That was what he remembered from his youth, the Darts swarming even though they knew all but the luckiest would die: it was never skill that overwhelmed the Ancients' defenses, merely weight of numbers. Guide had been lucky then, and it was a lesson he would not forget.

Hasten turned away from his console, and came to stand beside him, off hand brushing Guide's shoulder in private communication. He was almost as old as Guide, old enough to remember at least the blades' stories, cautionary tales whispered in the crèche, and he kept his eyes resolutely from the battle on the screen.

“All our systems are at full readiness. If we were to attack now, we could overwhelm the Ancient city.”

“And then what?” Guide glanced sideways, one corner of his mouth curling up in something like a smile, but he could tell Hasten was not deceived. "We cannot defeat Queen Death, not with what we have.”

Hasten dipped his head. “No. But — it goes against my grain to see that city destroying our kin.”

“She is not our kin,” Guide said, but the words lacked force. He shook his head, denying his own fears. The Lanteans were not the Ancients — John Sheppard was no Ancient, though he might carry their genetic marker. And why had he not acted by now? Surely he knew how desperate his situation was.

“So she has said.” Hasten's tone was muted. “We should act, Commander.”

“We wait,” Guide answered, and turned away from his touch.

“Commander.” That was Precision, the other conversation unsensed, perhaps unnoticed. “Commander, if we were to send Darts in support of the Lanteans — surely that would not be too much.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Guide saw Alabaster cock her head, and answered before she could respond. “No. We had a bargain, which they have not fulfilled. They are counting on us to be desperate, but we must play a longer game.”

“If we don't back one side or the other,” Bonewhite said, “there will no longer be a game.”

“And why should we back the Lanteans?” Ease demanded.

“There can be no truce with Queen Death!” That was Ember, sharp and out of turn, and Alabaster bared teeth in a smile.

“The cleverman speaks truth,” she said. “The bridge is burnt.”

One of them was a traitor, Guide thought. Ember had warned him of the sabotage, shared his certainty that it was one of the council, and he believed Ember. Trusted Ember, though he had been betrayed by clevermen before. Bonewhite and Alabaster were waiting for him to speak, to make all right again, but he said nothing. Let the traitor act now, and Guide could deal with him — assuming always he did not have too many allies.

Hasten hissed softly. “To join with the Lanteans —”

“Is our only choice,” Alabaster said sharply. “And your queen's will!”

“But only the queen's will,” Ease said.

“And mine,” Guide said. He was almost sure now, Ease or Hasten or both together, and he shifted his weight, balancing on the balls of his feet.

“You are not queen here,” Ease said. “Nor is your daughter.”

Guide almost moved then, but he held his hand, knowing he would need full proof to keep the council on his side in Steelflower's absence. “Steelflower is queen,” he said, and saw Bonewhite shift uneasily. The Hivemaster knew the truth, of course — would he betray the fiction?

“This is a fool's game,” Ease said. “I put it to you all, lords of the council. Guide has overreached — again! — and we are trussed to pay the price for his folly. Our queen is vanished, who knows where, and whatever plan was made with the Lanteans has fallen to pieces. We must join Queen Death — we have no choice but to join her — and if we join her now, while the outcome of this battle is in doubt, we may win her favor.”

“This is Steelflower's hive,” Ember snapped. “And you do not speak for me.”

“I speak for Steelflower,” Alabaster began, and Bonewhite lifted his head.

“It is so, Snow's Daughter, but you cannot speak for her in this, any more than her Consort can.”

“Madness!” Ember said. “And I remind you all that someone has already tried to sabotage our ships, to achieve this same goal by less honorable means.”

“If it's for the council to decide, let it decide.” Guide's tone was silken, but he glanced quickly from one man to the next, trying to guess how they would jump. Ember and Alabaster were on his side — for an instant, he regretted bringing his daughter so soon into his intrigues — and Precision, and he thought Bonewhite, but the others….

“I am Steelflower's man,” Bonewhite said, with a sigh. “And Queen Death will not deal fairly with us, not if we brought her the Lanteans' queen and all her court to feed upon.”

“And I,” Precision said.

Hasten bowed his head unspeaking.

“Fools,” Ease snapped, and reached beneath his coat. Both Ember and Precision lunged from their places, putting their bodies between the weapon and the young queen, but Guide had been ready for that move. He leaped across the open platform, off hand rising to bat aside the weapon. He heard the beam shriek past him, felt its kiss along his ribs, and then he had Ease by the throat, sinking claws into the soft skin. He forced Ease's head back, forced his body back against the console, feeling a depth of hatred he had not suspected as they met skin to skin.

“Traitor indeed,” Guide said, as much for the others as for his own satisfaction. “What did she promise you that you would betray your queen?”

“Victory and her favor,” Ease gasped, defiant, “and the feeding grounds of Earth.”

“Which are not hers to give.” Guide set his claws, snarling, handmouth fastening hard, and Ease screamed in fury and despair. He drank deep, life flowing into him as Ease withered beneath his touch, let the husk fall at last to the deck. “Is there anyone else who questions our tactics?”

Silence was the only answer.

Radek bent over his displays, frowning as though concentration would keep the fear at bay. It didn't entirely, of course — he was dry-mouthed, sweating — but his hands were sure on the controls, and his brain was clear. The city was holding up well under the attack, except for the damage to the East Pier, and Dr. Sommer was taking a team down there; with any luck he'd have it back on line shortly. The shield was only down about ten percent, and Sheppard was spending the drones with uncanny effectiveness. Well, canny enough, that was the way they were supposed to be used, and that was the one thing that was going to save them if Todd didn't join the fight –

A light flashed on his board, and he touched keys to see the warning. One of the Wraith cruisers disabled in the first passes of the battle was drifting closer to the city, its course converging with theirs. He had seen the cruiser abandoned, shedding Darts and men, but he scanned it anyway, found no sign of life on board. Or was there? His frown deepened, and he grabbed control of a single sensor suite, ignoring the flare of protest. The deeper probe was ambiguous: was that the cruiser's own quasi-living structure that he was reading, or was it a skeleton crew.

"Zelenka," Sheppard said in his ear. "I need those scanners."

"Yes, yes," Radek answered, but touched keys to return control to the city. "Colonel, we are on a collision course with that drifting cruiser —"

"Yeah, I saw that," Sheppard answered. "I've corrected for it."

"But —" If Radek hadn't been watching, they might have missed it, or taken it for one more release of gases from a damaged ship. But he was watching, and he saw the vent open, the vapor plume sparkling as gases froze instantly to snow in the vacuum. Even then, he might have dismissed it as automatic response, systems still struggling to function, nothing of significance. In his screen, the numbers shifted again, the line of the projected course curving back to cross Atlantis's shields in less than thirty minutes. He swore in Czech.

"Problem?" General O'Neill asked, looming over his shoulder.

"Yes, and a bad one." Radek pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Sheppard, do you see?"

"Yeah. Was that deliberate?"

"Was what deliberate?" O'Neill asked.

"That damaged ship." Radek pointed with his chin, his hands busy on the sensor controls. Scan the cruiser properly this time, he thought, see what's really in there — full spectrum, not just lifesigns and power usage. "It was on a collision course, and we moved to avoid it. But it — maybe it's coincidence, but it vented atmosphere in the just the right place to nudge it back into our path again."

"Crap," O'Neill said.

"I can take it out," Sheppard said. "I don't like wasting the drones, though…."

Radek ignored them both, analyzing the readings as they came in. Power usage was way down, main power plants disabled; the lifesigns remained ambiguous. Atmosphere — well, there still was some, though it wouldn't be very nice to breathe, and there was a weird chemical trace that he didn't recognize. He adjusted the scanners, trying to home in on it, and his eyes widened at the results. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."

"What?" O'Neill bent closer.

"The cruiser is stuffed full of explosives," Radek said. The readings kept coming, weight and chemical composition — Death's people must have filled every unused storage space in the center of the ship. The spaces closer to the hull were empty, presumably so that the cruiser wouldn't blow before it accomplished its mission, but the rest…. The explosion would be strong enough to breach Atlantis's shields.

"Avoiding," Sheppard said, his voice distant again as he communed with the city.

On Radek's board, lights flickered as the remaining maneuver engines fired, and in the tactical display, Atlantis's course shifted, pulling away from the drifting cruiser. It hung motionless, the line of its projected course falling further and further from the city. Radek allowed himself a breath of relief, but then lights flared, a secondary engine firing from the cruiser's trailing edge. The lines began to converge again.

"Goddamnit!"

"Maybe it's time to waste some drones," O'Neill said, his tone tighter than his words.

"I don't have that many," Sheppard said, but the city monitors showed a drone settling into the silo. "It's got to be one good shot."

"Wait!" Radek stared at the numbers forming on his screen, answers to a question he really wished he'd never had to ask. "For God's sake, don't fire!"

"What?" Sheppard said, but in the monitor the drone eased back toward dormancy.

"We're already too close," Radek said. "If you destroy the ship here, it will severely damage the shields."

"What if Sheppard just takes out the engines?" O'Neil asked.

"I think the cruiser will blow anyway," Radek answered. "They'd be stupid to rig the ship any other way, and besides, the lifesigns — there may still be a skeleton crew on board, and they will detonate it."

"What's stopping them from blowing it up right now?" O'Neill glared at the screen as though he could stop the cruiser with mental force.

"I think — I assume they are waiting for a better shot." Radek punched keys, tracing the shape of the explosion, the pattern of damage. "If they fire it here, they will damage us, yes, but the city will not be entirely destroyed. There is a remote chance we could still get away."

"Crap," O'Neill said, not quite under his breath. "We can't keep playing dodge'em —"

"Sheppard is trying," Radek said. The city's course shifted, but there wasn't much more they could do, not with the East Pier engine off line. He touched his radio. "Dr. Sommer! Report your progress, please."

"We're not to the engine yet," Sommer answered, his voice distorted by hissing static. "There is a hull breach, it's going to take some time to get around."

"We have a situation," Radek said. "Take suits if it will be faster."

There was a little silence, and then Sommer said, "Okay, Dr. Zelenka, we're on it."

"They're not going to be fast enough," O'Neill said.

Radek shook his head. They weren't, and there was no other way down to that part of the city — Sommer had already gone through the closest transport chamber.

"Call them back," O'Neill said.

"But —"

"You said it yourself, they're not going to be able to fix it fast enough, and they're too exposed. Get them back, we'll deal with the engine after we solve this problem."

"All right," Radek said, and turned back to the radio to give the order.

"General O'Neill," Teyla said. She had been silent for so long that Radek had almost forgotten her presence. "I have a proposition."

Teyla moved to stand beside General O'Neill, the tactical display now laid out before them in Radek's central screen. "We cannot evade effectively — we are under fire, and the East Pier engine is damaged. But I can fly a Wraith cruiser. Radek says there is only a skeleton crew, or perhaps none at all. Let me go across and fly it to safety."

"Death will pull the trigger as soon as you board," O'Neill said.

"I think not." The pattern unfolded itself before her, clear and simple, what had been a tangle resolved by the cutting of a single string. "They will not waste their best weapon, not for a small party, and if we go by jumper, they may not know we are coming until we are aboard. And then we can create enough confusion that they will not know whether or not to detonate until it is too late."

"But once they know you have control, they'll blow it," O'Neill pointed out.

"If detonation is controlled remotely," Teyla answered, her voice steady. That was, of course, the great risk, but if it was the only way to save the city — she saw no other, and thought her odds were better than even.

"She'd be stupid to play it any other way." O'Neill gave her a mulish stare.

"But." Radek swung away from his console, lifting a finger. "We can jam the signal, that is not hard. We know their communications frequencies, and we can block them. And — if I go with you, I can probably defuse the bombs. Or help you send the ship on another course. I have worked on a cruiser before."

O'Neill's face stilled. Teyla could almost read the calculations, the balance of risk and reward, the city's need against the possible loss of his people. "How sure are you that you can jam the signal, Doc?" he asked.

Radek smiled. "I will bet my life on it."

"You're betting more lives than that," O'Neill said. "Woolsey! Who've we got who can fly a puddlejumper that we don't need somewhere else?"

Woolsey frowned, but answered directly. "There are ten civilians currently in the city who have the ATA gene, and all of them are checked out on the jumpers. Why?"

"See that cruiser?" O'Neill nodded to the screen. "It's full of explosives. We need to get somebody over there and defuse it before it hits us. Teyla has volunteered to lead a team to do just that, but I don't have anybody with the ATA gene that I can spare."

Woolsey's thin mouth compressed, lips almost vanishing, before he spoke. "I'm sure there will be someone. Teyla?"

She followed him into his office, the door sliding softly closed behind them as though this were just another meeting. He reached for his laptop, tying into the city's communications system, and looked at her over its lid.

"You don't have to do this, you know."

"But indeed I must." Teyla smiled to show him she accepted the risks. "I am the only one who can." This is what it meant to say it was a Gift, she thought suddenly. This was the thing she could do that no one else could manage, that could very possibly save the city and everyone in it, and that was indeed a gift she had not anticipated.

"Yes. I suppose so." But I don't have to like it. Wooley's expression said that as clearly as if he'd spoken aloud, but he turned his attention to the screen. "All personnel." He ran through the situation quickly and clearly, laying out the problem and the proposed solution and the need for a volunteer who was checked out in the jumpers.

There was an instant babble of response, at least four voices clamoring to be chosen, and Teyla's heart swelled. That was the thing she had grown to love about the people of Earth, or at least these Earth people, the ones who had walked through a gate knowing they would not return unless they found their own power source on the far side. They were a people for risks, for gambles, in a way that the people of Pegasus could not afford to be, Culled as they had been for millennia. She sorted out the voices — Coleman, one of the line cooks, on duty now with the other airmen protecting the lower floors of the central tower; Dr. Majeski, who blushed and stammered and knew more about the city's use of gamma radiation than any man alive; Eva Robinson, her voice cutting through the babble. Woolsey's eyes flicked closed for an instant.

"Dr. Robinson," he said. "If you'd join the party in the jumper bay. And thank you."

Teyla nodded. Eva was the one who could best be spared. She fastened her tac vest, and started for the bay herself.