The Lost

Chapter Thirty-three: Bright Venture

The George Hammond eased out of orbit of Atlantis’ new planet, gliding through space with a grace Sam wished she could record and keep forever.

“The course is plotted, ma’am,” her helmsman said.

Sam nodded, her hands on the arms of the captain’s chair. “Punch it.”

Ahead the hyperspace window opened in a green flash, and the Hammond lunged forward like an eager hunting dog let off the leash, charging ahead. All systems were go, everything optimal. Probably the last time that would be the case, Sam thought. They were going to go scratch the factory paint.

It was nearly sixteen hours to their rendezvous with the hive ship, timing that if Todd were correct should drop them out of hyperspace an hour after Queen Death’s ship powered down for its feeding process. Sam certainly wasn’t going to stay on the bridge the entire time. They’d rotate through the entire duty roster before they arrived, passing through a full afternoon and night for the Hammond’s crew.

And for Sheppard’s team as well. It was good to have friends out here. Sam was a team player. She’d spent most of her career embedded in a collegial structure, working with people whose skills and talents complimented hers. Solitary responsibility wasn’t her ideal command style. The crew of the Hammond were all new. They weren’t a team yet. So far they were strangers who were just beginning to work together. And tomorrow they’d be tested for the first time. She’d find out how they came together, what the gaping holes were, what their strengths and weaknesses were.

It was an intimidating thought, but Sam knew better than to let any of it show on her face. She waited until everything was running smoothly, their hyperspace passage as uncomplicated as the one that had brought them from Earth, and then returned to her quarters and her waiting laptop to do paperwork.

Her thoughts strayed. They’d uploaded to Atlantis’ databurst while they were in the city, electronic reports and private emails coming and going in fractions of a second through the wormhole opened once a week at tremendous cost in power. She’d had fifty eight incoming emails.

Her brother, Mark, had sent pictures from her niece’s soccer game and asked if she’d buy some Girl Scout cookies.

Cassie, her foster daughter, had sent three emails back to back, one asking her if she’d seen Band of Brothers, one asking if she knew anything about airborne training in Toccoa, Georgia in 1943, and one talking about how she hated her very boring job. She had been there three months, and of course it was boring. Sam didn’t think Cassie would be satisfied with nonprofit work in the long run, no matter how worthy the cause.

Teal’c had not sent one, a sure sign that he was off in trouble of his own. Otherwise he would have replied to her last one, sent from the last Milky Way gate outbound, a remote planet where once they had hunted for the Lost City of the Ancients, hoping it held weapons or secrets that would help them against Anubis and the Goa’uld. It held nothing, now or then, but it was the last Stargate, the last outpost of the Ancients in the Milky Way, before the long, cold void between galaxies.

Jack had sent seven emails, one each day since the last transmission, one for her to read each day until the next one. Hey, Carter…

And Daniel… There was a long ramble about Phoenician gods, a request for samples of alphabets now current in the Pegasus Galaxy, and the half humorous question of whether or not she’d been shot yet.

She’d reply to Daniel.

Sorry, Daniel. Not shot yet. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll see. We’re flying straight into Queen Death’s hive ship and it might be a trap or maybe not, so same old same old here. Listen, you’ve got the letters if you need them, right? I sent them to you instead of Mitchell. You know what to do with them if it comes to that. Which it won’t. I won’t bore you again telling you what a sweet ship Hammond is, but I’m still in love and familiarity isn’t breeding contempt but then it never does with me. Lots of beautiful Ancient buildings send their regards. I wish you were here. I truly do.

“We’re getting ready to exit hyperspace,” Sam said, standing up from her chair and coming around to where John and his team were waiting. “It’s about to be showtime.”

“We’re ready,” John said. They’d slept for a while, or at least he and Ronon had slept, in bunks in the cabin Sam had given them, and he expected Teyla had too, from the fact that she wasn’t yawning. Then they’d spent the rest of the trip trying not to pace and get in the way of Sam’s people. Now Ronon and Teyla looked as eager as he felt to get moving.

“As soon as we jump in, I expect they’re going to start trying to power up the ship,” Sam said.

“And our clock starts ticking, I know.”

“I’ll radio you if it looks like it’s starting to go bad. If they get their defensive systems back up, it’s possible that we can disable them. If it looks like that’s not going to happen, and we start taking a pounding, we’re going to have to jump out.”

“I know,” John said. “We’re ready.”

“Preparing to exit hyperspace,” the Hammond’s helmsman said.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Good luck.” She glanced over at a waiting technician. “Beam them down.”

The shimmer of the Asgard beaming technology was always disorienting for a moment. It took a couple of heartbeats before the hive ship corridor resolved itself clearly around John. Ronon had already put his back to John’s, covering the length of the corridor behind them. Teyla stepped to John’s left, her P90 at the ready, taking in their position.

The corridor was empty for the moment, the red light that the Wraith seemed to prefer tracing the weirdly organic shapes of the walls. John glanced down at his life-signs detector. There were moving forms nearby, but there was no way to tell if they were separated by walls or if they’d run into them in moments.

Sam had beamed them into what they’d guessed was the laboratory section of the ship, but it was hard to tell from featureless corridor if they’d gotten it right. The holding cells should be up and forward. If Todd’s tip was good, though, that would be a needlessly dangerous detour.

He chose the direction that promised fewer Wraith ahead, and signaled Ronon to take point. If they ran into one or two isolated Wraith, Ronon’s pistol would make less noise than P90 fire. If they ran into more than that, they’d take that as it came.

Teyla followed Ronon, her eyes searching the walls for signs of a door or side passageway. She was moving easily enough, showing no signs that her hip was bothering her. He just hoped this wasn’t going to end with them having to retreat at a sprint.

Ronon lifted a hand to stop them, and gestured to an opening in the wall. John glanced down at the life signs detector. There was no one in there. It looked like a laboratory when he looked inside, with benches and consoles and what might have been a large display screen against the wall, although it was dark.

“If the ship has powered down completely, it may not be possible for the scientists to go about their normal work,” Teyla said under her breath. She stepped forward, running her hands over one of the consoles. “I do not believe the main databanks are currently operable.”

John glanced up at the dark display screen. “You think they gave everybody the afternoon off?”

Ronon was still covering the corridor outside from the doorway. “Then what’d they do with McKay?”

“Put him back in a holding cell, maybe. Or maybe they aren’t going to stop asking him questions just because their computers are down.”

“Perhaps their scientists are needed to put the ship into its state of hibernation, and to restore it to its normal function.” Teyla spread one hand across the console, her fingers moving purposefully. “I am trying to activate this console, but the ship is not responding. It is as if it is sleeping.”

“We’d like it to stay asleep,” John said.

“We would also like to know how long it will take to power up the ship.”

“We can’t waste time trying to find that out,” John said. “The important thing is finding Rodney. If the defenses go back up, we’ll figure out something.”

“Would we not like to know where he is?” Teyla asked, not yet stepping away from the console.

“Can you get that thing to work or not?”

Teyla frowned, her hand moving on the console almost as if she were trying to push it along. John was reminded, in the sudden vivid way that irrelevant things rose into memory, of a herdsman trying to clear cows from a road.

“No,” she said finally in frustration. “I cannot.”

“Then let’s go.”

He waved them back out into the corridor. The next two openings were also empty rooms, one a storage room of some kind full of containers of liquid that didn’t seem to bear investigating, the other another laboratory, also deserted. He spared a glance for the life signs detector, and swore under his breath.

He tapped Ronon’s arm and gestured for him to hold up. They were going to have company. Ronon nodded, smiling sharply, and held his pistol at the ready, his whole body expectant. He looked almost happy at the prospect of getting to shoot something.

John tensed, waiting, painfully aware of the seconds passing. They must already be starting to power up the hive ship. They had to find Rodney before that happened, or else they had to figure on making their own way off the ship, and with the ship on alert that wasn’t going to be easy. Still, maybe they could get to the dart bay, take a dart out in the confusion and signal the Hammond —

The life signs detector showed their glowing dots almost on top of each other, and then he saw the movement, pale hair catching the light as the Wraith stepped around the corner. Ronon fired twice, the first shot making the Wraith stagger backwards, the second dropping him.

John caught Teyla’s eye. “Teyla?”

She took a deep breath and frowned for a moment as if looking at something he couldn’t see. “I do not know if he was able to communicate our presence to anyone,” she said. “There is too much alarm and confusion.”

“Let’s hope he wasn’t,” John said. He scowled down at the life signs detector. There were too many moving forms, and no way to tell if any of them was Rodney. “Let’s go.”

The corridor branched off into two others, one slanting upwards, the other down. John picked the upward one, moving quickly and checking every opening. There were too many deserted rooms, too many branching corridors. They could wander around a fleshy maze for an hour, all their time slipping away —

Teyla caught his arm, and he looked down at her. “This will take too long,” she said. “We must find out where he is being kept.”

“You have an idea?”

She squared her shoulders as if bracing herself for something. “They will know we are here soon enough already,” she said. “Let me try to get the knowledge from one of them. I think I can do it.”

He gritted his teeth. He hated asking her to risk touching one of their minds that way, but it was true that they weren’t getting anywhere. “What do you need?”

“I will need to be close,” she said. “We will need a prisoner.”

They took the next turning, following a single bright spot making its way down the corridor past several more serpentine bends. John gestured for Ronon to cover their rear, stepping out in front. They needed a prisoner in good enough shape for Teyla to do her thing, not stunned into unconsciousness or with large smoking holes in him.

He came around the corner behind the Wraith, its head bent over some kind of device in its hands, and put one shot through its shoulder. It screamed, the noise inhumanly loud in the cramped corridor, but Ronon was already moving, throwing the Wraith hard against the wall and then wrestling its arms behind it. That wouldn’t hold it for long, and if it broke free, it would be easy for it to spin, to jam its feeding hand against Ronon’s chest —

Teyla stepped out from behind John, her face as calm as if she were sitting cross-legged in meditation back in Atlantis, beautiful in shadow. The Wraith’s eyes locked onto hers, and both of them tensed. Ronon jammed his pistol hard against the Wraith’s side, and John trained his P90 right between its eyes, but he held still, heart hammering in his chest, waiting.

Fear. Confusion and fear. She felt it like ice within her, cold as the barrel of Ronon’s energy pistol against his side.

Once, under Todd’s tutelage, masquerading as his Queen Steelflower, she had learned to speak this way, to modulate the tones of her mind to what passed for conversation, to speak as a Wraith would speak rather than shout. This was different. This was as different as speech was from interrogation.

And yet she felt his fear lessen by some small amount. The touch of her mind did not send him burning in agony to his knees. It was imperative and order, the vise-like strength of the mind of a Queen.

*You will tell me where the scientist McKay is kept* she demanded, and he felt almost a moment of relief, as an unsure soldier would be steadied by John’s voice snapping an order, decision taken away, uncertainty resolved in the reliance on someone who ought to give the orders, who by right could command.

He did not resist, but the images were jumbled, corridors and doors, Wraith and more Wraith. People that he knew, others aboard the hive ship, with no clear picture of Rodney. Not useful, not coherent.

*Tell me what room.* He could not deny her. She was a Queen, and her mind was on his. No mere cleverman could conceal his thoughts from such, even if he might wish to. *I am a Queen* Teyla said, mind to mind, as though her hands ringed his wrists like iron. *Show me the chamber where the prisoner McKay is.*

Power and the thrill of power, the bright yielding of his mind to hers, as though he bent like a supplicant, head down before her beauty and her strength. The corridor, the room, not so far from here. Two turnings, and then the door.

*You will kill me.* He stated it as fact. Of course they would. When he had rendered her what she wanted, he would die, surely as a sacrifice beneath a sovereign’s hand.

*Yes* she said.

She pulled the energy pistol from Ronon’s hand, thumbing the settings, her fingers small around the large grip, the barrel against the cleverman’s ribs, and squeezed the trigger. The Wraith sprawled first to his knees, then collapsed to the floor in an ungainly heap, a pool of shadow in the darkened hall. She held the pistol out to Ronon.

He took it, glanced down at the stun setting, and frowned. “What did you do that for?”

“Because I wanted to.” In Teyla’s voice she heard the echo of a Queen’s tones, and Ronon’s frown deepened.

“Later,” John said, forestalling any further discussion. “Did you find out where Rodney is?”

“Yes. It is this way. Todd was right that it is a laboratory.” Teyla gestured to the left. “It is not far. Come.”

John let her lead, following after with the life signs detector, while Ronon took six. It took only a moment, which was probably a good thing. She knew that time always seemed to run unevenly in a mission, minutes seeming hours, elongating with strain and adrenaline, but even so they must have been aboard the hive ship for some minutes. Sooner or later it would awaken. Sooner or later they would activate their defensive systems, and then the Hammond might be seriously outclassed.

“It is here,” she whispered, gesturing to a closed door.

John squinted at the life signs detector in the dim light. “Two,” he said. “Rodney and somebody else. And there are a bunch one corridor over who are going to be here any second. Ok, let’s do this thing. Ronon, cover us.”

Quicksilver was in his laboratory when the alarms sounded. Doors slid shut all over the ship, panels of bone and cartilage connecting with the quiet hiss of ventilation systems sealing. The laboratory lights flickered and then came back to life as it went to internal emergency power.

“What has happened?” Quicksilver said.

Dust shook his head, but he looked disturbed. He cocked his head for a moment, listening to the great network, to the other minds aboard. “An unidentified ship has just come out of hyperspace,” he said. “And we are powered down while the ship restores himself. We have no external power. The Bright Venture sleeps.”

“That’s not good, is it?” Quicksilver asked, cold running through his veins. Fear. That’s what it was.

“It might be rival hive,” Dust said. “Or it might be…”

Quicksilver turned to the viewscreens, trying to get sensor readings. There they were, green and red on the screen, the dipping, weaving shape of a ship the size of a cruiser, approaching with evasive jinks and bobbles though the Bright Venture did not return fire.

The alarm tone changed. Pilots to the Dart bay. Though how they should get the bay doors opened with the ship dormant…

In the hall there was a burst of sound, the bright pure buzzes of stunners, and the heavy rattle of something else, something that seemed oddly familiar to Quicksilver. Terrifying. And yet he felt his heart lift inexplicably.

“We must get down,” Dust said, and pulled him to the floor behind one of the long tables. “Their weapons will pierce the door!” He drew a small stunner from a compartment in the wall behind them.

“I did not know you had that,” Quicksilver said. Weapons were the province of blades. Clevermen did not generally use them.

“It is for emergencies only,” Dust said with a joyless smile. “And this is an emergency, my brother. This is the worst kind of emergency.”

They were trapped in the laboratory, no way out except through the door, and no one with them, no blades or drones to defend them. He felt this had happened before, and though the fear clawed at him, it could not hold him.

“We will have to resist them as long as we may,” Quicksilver said.

Dust looked at him with surprise. “You are brave.”

“Not really,” Quicksilver said. “Unless I have to be. This is also for emergencies only.” He squared his shoulders as the door blew in.

Two humans burst into the room, their black clothing dark against the wreathing white smoke. Their weapons were held high, and their lights cast a fitful and piercing brightness, almost searing to look at. A third remained in the hall, his hulking back slightly visible behind them as he covered the corridor outside.

Quicksilver froze, his pulse hammering in his head.

The taller of the two humans swept his weapon around. “Rodney?”

“Hurry!” the one outside shouted. “I’m not going to be able to hold them long, Sheppard!”

“Rodney?” the smaller of the two called. “Rodney, are you here?”

Dust gave him a sideways look, a swift half-smile that Quicksilver knew he would keep in his memory forever. And then he darted out from the end of the table, firing his stunner at the intruders, narrowly missing the smallest one.

The other swung around, the beam of light from his weapon catching Dust just as he opened fire. Blood blossomed, and he jerked in the rain of hard things, six, eight catching him full in the body, tearing through velvet and cloth and flesh and muscle and bone, shaking him like a rag caught in a tornado, flinging him useless and broken to the floor, one final spark of pain flaring in his eyes before they fixed.

“No!” Quicksilver was hardly aware of himself, unconscious of any fear at all, rising up from behind the table and leaping for the stunner thrown from Dust’s opened hand. “No!” He dropped to the floor, across his brother’s blood, and his fingers closed around it. Once, twice, three bright bursts erupting at the dark figure who had slain Dust.

Quicksilver rolled, getting out of the way of return fire, and squeezed off another shot and another, pumping blast after blast into the human where he lay, just as he had torn Dust, grim determination in his face and bile in his throat. The smaller human dove behind a piece of equipment, and he threw shot after shot at her, pinning her and the one in the doorway both. His shots could not penetrate the metal of the equipment nor the frame of the door, but he could keep them thus, keep them until blades came.

The smaller one was screaming something, calling out to him or to her fallen packmate, he did not know. That one lay insensible, blood seeping from his ears, stunned again and again, his head lolling back. Quicksilver blasted him again for good measure. This is for Dust, he thought. This. Above, the ship’s alarms began to shriek in a high voice, overhead lights slowly warming.

Bright Venture was waking up.