“I don’t know, Sheppard,” she answered. “You’re getting pretty good at this diplomatic stuff.”
“Let’s hope I’m good at finding missing ships,” John answered, and headed for his quarters.
~#~
Bartolan woke, blinked bleary-eyed for a long moment before he recognized the walls of his own cabin on the Pride. With that, memory came rushing back, and he tried to sit up, only to fall back against the cushions, his curses silent only because he didn’t have the strength to speak aloud. Someone must have been monitoring, though, because a moment later, the door slid back and one of the med-techs hurried into the cabin. She was carrying a flask, and Bartolan stared at it, suddenly aware of how his tongue stuck like cotton-floss to the roof of his mouth.
“Easy, Captain,” the med-tech said, and helped him lean forward enough that she could put another couple of pillows behind his back. She opened the flask then, and filled a cup. Bartolan fumbled for it, and she steadied his hands so that he could drink. The water was warm, and tasted of the ship; he gulped it down, and pushed the cup back toward her.
“More.”
“Just a little.”
This time, he was able to hold the cup himself, and managed to swallow without gulping. He handed it back, feeling almost human again.
“You can have another in a few minutes,” the med-tech said. Marika was her name, Bartolan remembered, the youngest member of the crew, beating out one of the gun crew by three days.
“What’s our status?” His voice was starting to sound normal again, and he pushed himself up a little further on the pillows. That was a mistake. Pain spiked through his head and neck, and he winced and relaxed again.
“We’re entering the Baidu system,” Marika answered. “The scan says it has no Stargate, nor any detectible human population. We should achieve orbit shortly.”
That was good, Bartolan thought. That was a beginning. “Get me to the control room.”
“Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Marika looked genuinely frightened.
“Get Innyes, then,” Bartolan said, “but I need to be on my feet. I know she can give me something. And leave the water.”
Marika started to protest again, but he stared her down. ”Yes, Captain,” she said, and fled, leaving the flask beside his bunk.
Bartolan waited until the door closed behind her, and stretched awkwardly for the flask. He was sweating by the time he had it, lay back against the pillows with it clutched to his chest for some minute before he could muster the strength to unscrew the lid and drink. Even then, a dribble ran down his chin, and he wiped at it hastily, stubble rough under his hand. Still, it didn’t matter what he looked like, didn’t matter what he felt like, as long as he could get to the control room. Assuming the disease hadn’t destroyed his enhanced ATA gene and with it his ability to communicate directly with the ship, but he would face that when he had to. He dragged himself further up on the pillows, and sipped cautiously at the water. His stomach griped, but he thought that was hunger rather than sickness: surely a good sign.
It seemed to take forever before Innyes appeared, though the chronometer display said less than an hour had passed. Bartolan set the flask aside — he had managed not to empty it, though his body cried out for liquid — and raised himself on both elbows.
“Doctor. About time. I’m needed in the control room.”
“Not if you can’t stand on your own,” she answered, but went to one knee beside the bunk, fumbling for something in her case.
“That’s your department,” Bartolan said.
“My job is not to kill you.” She produced a vial and a syringe, and flicked the cap off the syringe. “And I can’t promise you this won’t.”
“I’ve had pick-up shots before,” Bartolan said.
“Not when you were this sick.” She shook her head. “I doubt you’ve been this sick before. Are you sure you want to take the risk?”
Trust no one. The warning he had received at the beginning of the voyage echoed in his mind. “I don’t have a choice,” he said, and held out his arm.
“On your head be it.” Innyes rubbed disinfectant in the hollow of his elbow, and expertly found the vein. Bartoln winced as the drug went in, but the burn was familiar. He took a deep breath, and then another, the flush of heat at the injection site spreading up his arm and into his chest, and Innyes caught his wrist, finger on his pulse. She counted, frowning, then released him and reached for the flask instead. She shook it, and her frown deepened. “Here, finish this. You’re certainly dehydrated.”
Bartolan drank, feeling his strength returning with each heartbeat. It wouldn’t last, he knew that from long experience, but for the next eight hours, he would be able to function almost normally. He could taste the drug on the back of his tongue, and sat up fully. This time, the room stayed steady, and he pushed himself to his feet. The cabin swayed alarmingly, and he braced himself against the wall. “What’s the status of the rest of the crew?” He hoped the question would hide his moment of weakness, but her lifted eyebrows suggested she wasn’t fooled.
“Much as before. The first to fall ill are starting to recover, but most of them have lost their ability to use the ATA gene. I assume that’s why you want us to land now?”
While we still have crew enough to handle the ship. Bartolan nodded. “Can you tell if it’s affected me?”
“Not until you try to interface with the ship,” Innyes said.
“So I’d better assume it has.”
“I think that’s wise.” Innyes hesitated. “Also — Captain, I’m not sure this is a natural disease.”
Of course it wasn’t. Bartolan let his eyes flicker closed for just a second. “What, then? Some kind of sabotage?”
“Possibly. But you understand I don’t have any evidence yet.”
“It started after Teos,” Bartolan said, but Innyes shook her head.
“I wouldn’t have thought their medical science is sophisticated enough to come up with something like this. I’d look to the homeworld, Captain.”
And that could mean anyone, Bartolan thought, or even no one, if the disease agent had been hidden aboard before they left, set to release at some predetermined time… There was no point speculating, he told himself firmly. “All right. If you find out anything useful, I want to know about it, but otherwise, don’t mention it unless I tell you to. Our first priority is to get ourselves safely onto the planet.”
Somehow he made it to the control room without falling, and the reaction from the control room crew, not applause but a murmur of relief and renewed confidence, was enough to get him to the captain’s station. He sank gratefully into its embrace, looking around the compartment. Esztli was at the pilot’s station — thankfully, he had the natural ATA gene — and Agosten had taken the navigator’s station, though from the way he was using keyboard inputs rather than the ship’s interface Bartolan guessed he had lost the ability to use the gene. The rest of the stations were filled with junior technicians and even a few boys from the gun crew: presumably the ones who were well enough to work, he thought. “Agosten. What’s our status?”
Agosten straightened from his console and came to stand beside the captain’s station. “We’re just entering orbit around Baidu, sir. We’ve confirmed that it’s uninhabited and there’s no Stargate. We’re searching for a landing site now.”
“Good. Carry on.”
“Sir.” Agosten turned back to his station just as Esztli lifted his head.
“Captain. We’ve achieved stable orbit.”
“Good,” Bartolan said again. “Keep looking.” He leaned back in his chair, resting his hand on the waiting gel. His fingers sank into its familiar surface, but there was none of the tingling sense of connection that usually came from touching the interface. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and thought he could feel something shifting at the back of his mind. He focused on that, and thought he could just make out the sound of the data as it streamed back from the planet. But
it was drowned, distorted as though it came from the bottom of the sea. Here and there, he could catch fragments, a word, a shape, an image, but they twisted away from him and disappeared. Ship. He reached out the way he had taught himself to do, groping for the connection as though he fumbled in the dark for light. Ship, do you hear me? There was nothing, no answer, and he tried again, forming a mental shout. Ship!
This time, he felt the Pride’s attention shift, as though it glanced his way. He flung himself at it, and for an instant he touched the connection, felt the data suddenly come clear and focused — and then it was gone again, dragged back to the hollow undersea shapes and sounds.
“Captain,” Agosten said. “I think we’ve got an option.”
“Show me.” Bartolan hauled himself up out of his chair and went to stand at Agosten’s shoulder. He braced himself on Agosten’s chair, and the other man gave him a wary glance.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine.” Bartolan hoped that would end it, but instead, Agosten cut his eyes toward his own unused interface.
“Any luck?”
“Not to speak of.”
“But you got something?” Agosten sounded surprised, but managed to keep his voice down.
“I could feel it was there, managed to get a moment of connection, but lost it. You?”
Agosten shook his head. “Nothing. Not a flicker. I might as well never have had the damn gene.”
Bartolan swallowed a curse. If that was where the disease had left most of them… He would face that later. Right now, they needed to land the Pride before they lost control of her systems. “Right. You said you had a landing?”
“Here.” Agosten pointed to his screen, and Bartolan leaned closer. It was a swath of open land — prairie grassland, by the look of it — about forty degrees south of the planet’s equator, bordered by mountains to the north and east, and ocean to the west. “It’s pretty much grass all the way. There are a few rocky outcrops when you get closer to the mountains, but most of it is clear. It looks like it might make good farming land, actually. I’m surprised the world wasn’t settled.”
“Who knows what the Ancients were thinking?” Bartolan considered the displays, visual scan and mapping scanners side by side. They both showed the same things, open ground with lots of room to land the Pride, and he nodded. “That looks good, First Officer. Set her down.”
He returned to his chair, watching as Esztli coaxed the Pride out of orbit and into atmosphere, balancing her shields against the heat and turbulence of reentry. Orsolya was in the engine compartment, managing the power output; Bartolan could feel her presence even through the distorted connection, power levels balanced perfectly against demand, a steady hum at the base of his skull. The Pride noticed him then, flicked at him uneasily, and he pulled back, not wanting to make the job harder. Esztli was doing the work of three men, monitoring the scanners while handling all the controls, his hands darting from one set of keys to the other and back again. They flashed over the northern hemisphere, trailing smoke and fire, slowed as they crossed the equator and dropped to something like a reasonable speed. The first of the grasslands lay below them, and Esztli turned east, following some pattern that Bartolan couldn’t see.
Agosten was talking now, calling off speeds and distance: he had his spot marked, and all Bartolan could do was hope he’d chosen well. The Pride slowed still further, antigravity ramping up, cold thrusters coming on line. The main cameras showed a sea of pale green-gold grass rising to meet them, under a sky as deeply blue as a mountain afternoon; mountains shimmered on the horizon, their shapes distorted by heat and distance. They passed a low hill, bare and pocked with holes, but it flashed past before Bartolan could get a good look at it. Then the ground dropped away, the grass flattened down a long slope, and a basin opened up ahead of them.
“Here,” Agosten said, and Esztli brought the Pride lower still, until she was barely twenty meters above the ground. Bartolan expected her to slow and hover, but instead Esztli kept the power on, until they swooped up over the lip of a low cliff, onto a higher plateau. It, too, was covered with the tall grass, and this time Esztli did slow, circling, and finally lowered Pride to the surface. Bartolan felt the landing gear touch, the three big feet aft, and then the smaller ones under the left wing and nose, and finally the right wing.
“Down, sir,” Esztli said.
“Why didn’t you land back there?” Agosten demanded. “I told you to land there, in the basin.”
Esztli shook his head. “That’s a flood plain, sir, didn’t you see the grass on that slope? Water ran down it once, it’ll do it again.”
“Good call, Pilot,” Bartolan said, before Agosten could protest any further. “First Officer, arrange the watches so that we can keep the ship’s systems activated while we figure out our next step.”
~#~
Ladon kicked at the edge of the hearth in his formal office, realized that he was acting like a schoolboy, and turned resolutely away. “Anything from Atlantis?”
“Not yet, sir.“ Ambrus didn’t look up from his keyboard. “I don’t expect we’ll hear anything for at least another day.”
“Damn it.” They had been out of touch with the Pride for nearly three days, far too long for it to be anything but a major malfunction. “What about our exploration teams?” Those were the scouts that had been dispatched to the worlds along the Pride’s planned course, on the off chance that the Pride had been forced down on one of them.
“Also nothing,” Ambrus said. “Though it’s a long shot. If the Pride landed any distance from the Stargate, our teams might not find them.”
Which was why they needed the Lanteans’ help. Of course, Bartolan would have made every effort to land near a Stargate, and the fact that he wasn’t there only increased the chance that the Pride had crashed. “I need something for the generals,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ambrus began, and the intercom buzzed. He answered, and looked over his shoulder. “It’s the Chief of Sciences, sir.”
“Show her in.”
There were dark circles under Dahlia’s eyes, but she looked more alert than she had the last time Ladon had seen her, and he straightened.
“Is there news?”
“Maybe.” Dahlia allowed herself a tired smile. “Just maybe we have something. I had my communications team complete a deep review of everything recorded from the Pride’s open channel, and we received at least the beginning of a transmission. It’s faint and garbled, but there’s definitely something there.”
“Can you decipher it?”
“I think so. And if not, we can at least determine the Pride’s location when it was sent.” Dahlia paused. “However, it’s going to take time. You might want to consider postponing this meeting.”
“How long will it take?”
“At least another day. Maybe longer. But then you’ll have something solid to share.”
Ladon considered that. She was right, it would be better to have something to share beyond the simple fact that the Pride was missing; on the other hand, the longer he waited, the less likely it was that his rivals would take his statements at face value. No, he still needed their support badly, and they were more likely to give it if they thought they could exact a desperation price for it. “Too long,” he said. “I have to talk to them today.”
“If you can wait until this afternoon, we might be able to give you the Pride’s course,” Dahlia said.
“No, I want to treat this as routine, a glitch in the systems — nothing they need to worry about.” Ladon looked at Ambrus. “When are we scheduled?”
“Two hours, sir.”
“Then I’ll see if I can’t push my people just a little,” Dahlia said. “I assume you’ll want me there?”
“Please,” Ladon said, and she hurried away.
The council met in the same conference room just below ground level, the table centered beneath the rings of windows. The sky outside was cloudy, and the supplemental light h
ad been switched on, bathing the room in warm light. Ladon took his place at the head of the table, waving for the others to be seated. It was the full council this time, the four generals, Dolos, Balas, Tivador, and Karsci, now joined by Moric, in charge of agriculture, and Vendel, the civilian head of the Council of Mayors. And Dahlia, of course, sitting almost at the foot of the table. Rosa Virag stood at the back of the room, ready to make her report on the Lanteans’ visit, and Ladon allowed his smile to warm slightly as he met her steady gaze.
“Gentlemen. We have quite a bit of business to get through, so let’s begin at once.”
“Let’s begin with the thing that matters,” Karsci said. “What’s this I hear about losing contact with the Pride?”
Ladon had been expecting someone to try to startle him like that, and raised his eyebrows. “That was later on the agenda, but we can begin there if you’d like.”
“So it’s true,” Tivador said. He gave Karsci a crooked smile. “I owe you for that, general.”
Balas said, “I think we had better. Would the Chief of Sciences care to explain?”
Ladon hid a grimace. He hated throwing Dahlia to the wolves like this, but any attempt to help her would only make things worse.
Dahlia folded her hands on the tabletop, a schoolteacher’s gesture. “At the seventh night-hour yesterday, the Pride failed to make a check-in transmission. We immediately tried to raise her on the usual frequencies, but received no response. We expanded the bandwidth and kept trying, but to date we’ve heard nothing. The Pride should have been twenty hours from orbit over the homeworld at that point, which is outside the range of any scanners here or on our allied worlds. We have, of course, continued to search, and have picked up what may be a transmission from the ship, but we haven’t been able to enhance it well enough to be sure. And that is all we know right now, gentlemen.”
Several people spoke at once — Balas and Karsci were no surprise, Ladon thought, but he had expected better from Vendel. Vendel stopped, gesturing for the generals to proceed, and Karsci waved to Balas.
“So what are we doing about it?” Balas demanded. “Seventh night-hour yesterday — that’s twenty hours ago.”
Stargate Atlantis #24 Page 11