The Lost

Chapter Thirty-two: Dangerous Passages

Teyla stretched, trying to find balance. Her left hip was still tender, though the range of motion was back. The problem was weight. When she tried to stand on her left foot and extend her right foot straight out in front until her toes were level with her shoulders, her left hip gave. It was very frustrating.

Dr. Keller had said that the bone bruise would heal well eventually, but a matter of weeks seemed like such a long time. It has only been six days, Dr. Keller had said. You have to give it time. And yet time was the thing it felt there was so little of. Every day, every moment that flew by, was another moment that Rodney remained in captivity, was another day that he might be giving the Wraith everything they wished to know, was another day he might be in torment while they had no idea where he was or what they might do.

It weighed upon them, knowing there was nothing to do. How do you search the galaxy for one man?

Teyla stretched, extending her arms in counterpoint to her legs, each extension graceful and controlled, her long thin slitted skirt opening in flowing lines.

Mr. Woolsey said that they must give their sources time to work. John had only returned from returning the Avenger to the Genii day before yesterday. It would take time for their intelligence networks to be cast wide to bring in useful information, even if Ladon Radim acted immediately to keep their bargain. Teyla did not doubt that he would at least bend some effort to keeping it, but how much and how quickly was questionable. And so they must prepare and wait, make certain that everything was in readiness when the call came.

It seemed like so little. It felt like doing nothing, and how could they do nothing even for a few hours? It was worse with Torren on New Athos. When he was here, Teyla never lacked for something to do. Every moment was filled and more so. While he was with Kanaan, she might sleep with no regard for his schedule, eat with her friends, go to the gym. And yet this day seemed to be taking forever.

Though it was only ten in the morning.

Stretch. Concentrate. Surely even if her mind were too disordered to meditate, she could find release for this tension in movement. Eyes closed, stretching toward the bright snowlight that came in through the stained glass window, the city's heating systems purring softly.

The sound of the studio door opening.

Oh, sorry, John said.

She opened her eyes to see him standing just inside, clad in sweat pants and a black t shirt, his gym bag in his hand.

“I didn’t realize you were here,” he said.

Which was an out and out lie, Teyla thought. If he had not known she was here he would not be carrying his bantos sticks. Also, he would have knocked on the studio door before entering if he truly did not know who was using this room.

John at least had the good grace to look sheepish. “I can come back,” he said.

For a moment she was almost tempted to say, yes, you can, so foul was her mood. But it would be unfair to take it out on John, when he was as worried as she was and probably equally keyed up. “I do not mind sharing the room,” she said, her shoulder cracking as she completed the stretch and sank into her last posture. Thankfully, her hip held, though it twinged rather painfully.

John shrugged, his sticks protruding from his gym bag. “Want to spar? I promise I’ll take it easy with your hip.”

“Will you?” Teyla’s eyebrows rose. “Will you take it easy on me?” Absolute nerve, as though she didn’t clean the floor with him nine times out of ten.

“Yeah, I mean, you’re just getting back into it and all…” He gave her a sideways smile. “Maybe I’ll win for a change.”

“I would not place any bets on that,” Teyla said, going over to the bench for her sticks.

“Think you can take me with your hip messed up?”

Teyla turned around, lifting her sticks into guard, her eyes meeting his in challenge. “I can take you anytime, any way I want.”

“Ok then.” He lifted his, a smile transforming his face, reminding her suddenly of that so much younger man who had come to Athos nearly six years ago, who had said that he liked tea and Ferris wheels and things that went very fast. “Come and get me.”

“I will,” she said, beginning a long, wide circle around him, sticks at the ready.

There were ways to compensate for an injury. In real fights this happened all the time. More than once she’d had to take on an opponent when she was already wounded. Of course John had both the height and reach on her, not to mention the strength, but it had never done him that much good before.

Circling, circling. She saw the movement in his eyes an instant before he lunged, and she sidestepped it easily, spinning around him on her right foot, bringing the stick down in a stinging blow across the back of his thighs.

“Yow!” He twisted around, dropping out of guard as he did, his left arm rising.

Perfect. A straightforward forearm blow, right across the inside of his left arm.

John dropped the left hand stick, and Teyla backed off, circling, a little smile on her face. “Are you going easy on me? Or perhaps I should go easy on you?”

He bent and picked it up, his eyes not leaving hers. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Wasn’t it?” she asked airily. “You can surrender anytime you like.”

“I don’t think so.” He was grinning as he picked up the stick, though she could see the long red welt standing out on his forearm. “We’re not done.”

“No, we’re not,” she said. Circling. Circling. This time he was going to wait and let her come to him. Which was smarter, actually, give the difference in their heights. Playing defensively was a better strategy for him, but one he almost never used.

A feint, and she dropped below his response, letting the momentum of his movement carry him sideways to her as she once again stepped behind him. Both sticks, in swift one-two motion, right across the seat of the pants. No doubt it was less painful than the forearm blow but more embarrassing.

He backed off, scrubbing his sweat soaked hair back off his forehead. “What’s gotten into you today?”

“Merely blowing off some steam,” Teyla said. It felt so good to move like this, to feel each connection solid and real. “If it is too much for you, you can retire.”

“It’s not nearly too much,” he said, circling again. “I can take a lot of punishment.”

“I’m sure you can.” Reversing direction, stalking sunward around him. “But you do not have to.”

“Think I’m going to back down?”

“You could.” Circling, circling. The tips of their sticks touched, just grazing each other in passing, her eyes on his.

“Gonna have to do better than that,” he said, and exploded into motion, a furious feint and lunge toward her bad side. She caught his stick on hers, though the weight behind it nearly pushed her to her knees, arms straining, a foot apart.

“Your fly is unzipped,” Teyla said.

He looked and in that moment she disengaged, slipping under his stick like a whisper, laughing as she went.

John straightened up, a sheepish expression on his face. “I can’t believe I fell for that! I’m wearing sweat pants.”

“You are too easy to distract,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes smiling into hers.

“You had better be careful,” she said. “An unscrupulous opponent could take advantage of you.”

“They might,” he said. “Lucky for me, I don’t like playing it safe.”

“Don’t you?” Another feint, and this time she slipped to the left, dodging his riposte neatly. The left stick caught him in the back of the knees and he dropped before her, the right stick going around his throat as she leaned forward, her right knee in his back and his shoulders pulled back against her, the back of his head against her belly.

“Erk,” he said as his knees hit the floor, and he looked up at her, the stick at his throat, taut as a bow in her hands.

“Will you yield to me at last?” Teyla asked quietly, feeling his pulse thrumming in his neck, hammering in time with hers.

His eyes met hers. “Oh yeah,” he said as she bent over him.

“Colonel Sheppard to the gateroom! Colonel Sheppard to the gateroom! We have an incoming transmission from Todd.” Amelia Banks switched the radio back out of transmit and looked up at Woolsey leaning over her shoulder.

“Put Todd on,” Dick Woolsey said grimly. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

The viewscreen stabilized, a grainy picture that showed nothing but a headshot of Todd. “I only have a moment, and I will only say this once,” he said. “Dr. McKay is being held aboard Queen Death’s hiveship. Most of the time he is in the forward laboratory section. You are fortunate, as that section is less heavily guarded than most of the ship.” He gave what might pass for a Wraith smirk.

“Good information,” Dick said, “But useless without the location of the ship.” He made himself keep his voice light, though he felt a surge of excitement run through his veins.

“Of course,” Todd said. “And what is it worth to you to know the location of the ship?”

“It’s to your advantage to tell us and have us do your dirty work for you,” Woolsey said calmly. “Or not. But you don’t seem to have time for a long discussion about it.”

Todd snarled.

Sheppard came bounding up the stairs from the transport chamber wearing gym clothes and looking distinctly flustered. He crowded in beside Dick at the monitor. “I’m here.”

Todd’s expression changed to something like amusement. “And how is the Young Queen?”

“Huh?”

“The ship’s location,” Dick said patiently.

“In seventeen of your hours Queen Death’s ship will be at the following coordinates. The planet is unimportant and uninhabited except for a small garrison we keep there extracting some precious minerals from the world’s soil. With our biotechnology it is necessary to provide the ship with the proper building blocks for it to use to expand and repair, and indeed to continue in good health.”

“You have to feed your ship?” Sheppard asked keenly.

“From time to time,” Todd said. “Even the largest ships must consume new materials and enter a brief period of digestive dormancy while they assimilate them. During that time a ship is exceedingly vulnerable. It is asleep, for all practical purposes. Its defenses are down, it is not prepared for hull regeneration, and engines and weapons are offline. Queen Death has been using her ship hard. She must bring new material aboard and give it time to consume it.”

“And how long does this take?” Dick asked.

“No more than a few hours, typically,” Todd said. “So it is our practice to go to some remote spot and complete the entire process in less than one of your days. Her ship will be at this location in seventeen hours, and it will stay with certainty no more than four or five, though it may stay as long as eight depending on the amount of new material to digest.” Todd looked down at his hands as though they were moving over a console. “I am sending the coordinates. Now.” There was a brief databurst, and the transmission dissolved into static. An instant behind that the Stargate cut out.

Dick drew himself up. “Whew.”

“I’ve got a set of coordinates,” Banks said. “It’s a planet a little less than an eighth of the way around the galactic rim. There’s a Stargate, but we’ve never used it but once to send a MALP through. There’s nothing there.”

Radek Zelenka looked down from the board above, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “It could be a trap,” he said.

“Todd doesn’t know we have the Hammond,” Sheppard said. “He’s assuming we’ll have to send a jumper through the Stargate.”

“Banks, ask Colonel Carter to meet us in the briefing room at her earliest convenience,” Dick directed. “We need to talk about this. And then call Dr. Keller. Sheppard, get your team together.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Let’s say ten minutes.”

“It’s the only real lead we’ve got,” Sheppard said, settling down into one of the conference room chairs, a cup of coffee in his hand. He hadn’t taken this ten minutes to go get changed, and he still looked disheveled.

“What is?” Dr. Keller asked as she came in, followed by Dr. Zelenka.

“Todd’s tip,” Zelenka said, sitting down opposite her on the near side of Sheppard. “He says Rodney is on Queen Death’s ship and he says it will be parked and dormant at a certain place.” Zelenka put his travel mug down before him and looked around expectantly. “I feel I must play devil’s advocate here and say that it may very well be a trap.”

“It may be,” Dick said. “And that’s one thing we need to discuss. But let’s wait for everyone to get here.”

“What about the Genii?” Keller asked, frowning.

“We haven’t heard from them yet,” Dick said.

Sheppard shifted in his seat, but said nothing. Ladon Radim, for all his promises, had as yet delivered nothing, while unexpectedly the meeting with Todd had borne fruit. Still, Dick thought, the Genii might come up with something of importance down the road. One could not say that their diplomatic overtures were entirely wasted, even if nothing had come of them so far.

Colonel Carter and Major Franklin came in a few moments later, Ronon in animated conversation with Franklin about some sort of target shooting competition, and Teyla slipped in behind them, her hair soaking wet as though she had just come from the shower. She sat down unobtrusively beside Ronon, while Carter took the chair beside Sheppard.

There was a lengthy recapping of the facts, complete with playback of Todd’s message. When it faded everyone sat in silence for a long moment. Carter was looking down the table with the expectant air of someone who thought the facilitator ought to get on with it, but who doesn’t feel like they ought to be the one to go first.

“Colonel Carter,” Dick said. “You look as though you have an idea.” He might as well get it out in the open and get started. Everyone was looking at her anyway.

“Just a thought,” Carter said. “Unless Todd has better intelligence than we think, he doesn’t know about the Hammond.”

Sheppard nodded, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. “If they’re expecting a cloaked jumper, or if this info is on the up and up and they’re not expecting us at all, the Hammond could do some serious damage.”

“If it’s on the up and up and they really are powered down, we could destroy Queen Death’s hive ship,” Carter said. “And possibly take her out too, if she’s onboard.”

“That would be the best case scenario,” Dick said. “And while that’s certainly desirable, let’s look at the worst case.”

“The worst case is that they’re waiting for us,” Carter said. “And that they do know about the Hammond. But even if they are, even if we drop out of hyperspace and the hive ship is powered up, or if there are half a dozen hive ships, our shields can certainly take it for the few seconds it will take us to open a new hyperspace window and get out of there.”

“But isn’t the plan to get Rodney off the ship?” Keller asked. “Not just destroy it?’

Sheppard looked at her across the table. “We jump in, we see if the defenses are down, if everything is on the up and up. If it is, Carter beams a team aboard the hive ship, we grab Rodney, she beams us out, and then shoots up the place.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ronon said gruffly.

“And if the hive ship brings its defensive systems back online while you’re aboard?” Dick asked, his eyes on Sheppard.

“Then Carter’s got to get them down again. Or we do. Or get to the Dart bay. There are a lot of options.”

It didn’t sound like a lot of good options to Dick. But this was the best lead they’d had, perhaps the best they were going to have. And Carter was unlikely to risk her ship on its maiden run if it looked like the entire situation was a set up. She’d jump out if it seemed like the hive ship wasn’t actually powered down.

They were all looking at him, waiting for him to be the kind of decisive leader they expected and deserved. He glanced at Sheppard. “What if you can’t find Dr. McKay? Surely the Wraith have removed his subcutaneous transmitter.”

“If he’s not in the labs where Todd said he was, he’s probably in one of the holding cells,” Sheppard replied. “We check them as a backup plan. And if he’s not aboard or we can’t get to him…” He let his voice trail off.

“I beam the team off and we jump out,” Carter said. “I can keep a lock on their transmitters. As long as the hive ship’s jamming device stays down, I can pull them out anytime I need to.”

“And if the hive ship activates its jamming device after transport?” That was the catch. That was the really big catch. “Todd did not give us any idea how long it would take for a ship to come out of dormancy.”

Teyla cleared her throat. “If we can find a command terminal, I may be able to speak with the ship. While I probably cannot override Queen Death’s orders, I will certainly be able to find out what its status is and whether or not it is powering up.”

Franklin looked down the table boggling at her, but Carter didn’t even blink. Of course she was familiar with Teyla’s Gift.

“That’s good enough for me,” Sheppard said.

Of course he thought so. Sheppard was ready to jump on any half-baked plan that offered to rescue Dr. McKay, but it was Dick’s job to knock holes in things that didn’t stand up on their own. It was his job not to throw tens of lives away on one. Carter was eager to get her ship into action against the Wraith and see how it performed. She wasn’t going to be the voice of sanity.

Still, this was hopeful. This was the best lead they’d had, and the opportunity to do Queen Death some actual damage. It was in Todd’s best interest to play straight with them. If his information was genuine, they might get rid of his enemy with no effort to himself. And if the information were false, the loss of Sheppard’s team would not actually cripple Atlantis, though the double dealing would destroy any relationship between them, any tentative truce. If Todd did not wish to betray Queen Death, he could simply have said nothing, rather than risk making an enemy of one or the other. No, Todd had every reason to be telling the truth. Dick could parse that out.

“You have a go, Colonel Sheppard,” he said. The timeframe to get into position was short enough as it was.

John stopped Woolsey on the way out of the conference room. “I’ve got one more concern,” he said, letting everyone else go ahead. Teyla very carefully did not look back at him, her back straight, deep in conversation with Radek. He waited until they were out of earshot. “It’s about Zelenka.”

Woolsey nodded like he’d been expecting it. “You don’t want him on this mission.”

“This is a combat mission,” John said. “A straight up combat mission. And we don’t know what kind of shape Rodney’s going to be in. If he’s hurt or drugged or something Ronon’s going to have to carry him while Teyla and I cover. We can’t take care of Zelenka too. I’m good with him being on the team, and I know he’s been working with Ronon on the shooting range, but this is a military assault. He doesn’t belong in it. Teyla and Ronon and I will handle it.”

“Would you be surprised that I agree with you?” Woolsey smiled mirthlessly. “Dr. Zelenka stays in Atlantis this time. I never meant that he should turn into Rambo.”

“Good,” John said. “And once we get Rodney back, he’ll be off the hook.”

“As soon as Dr. McKay can return to duty,” Woolsey reminded him.