“Yeah.” Beautiful and fragile and indomitable, he thought, and as hard to read as the Earth people always were.
“I don’t think I can get down there,” she said, and leaned cautiously over the edge. “Not without rope.”
“Which we don’t have,” Rodney said. “Nor, may I point out, do we have anything to make a rope with.”
Jennifer grimaced at that, as though at a memory.
Ronon said, “Rodney’s right.” He glanced at the sky — after noon already, which meant he’d need to find a way down fairly quickly. The river below them looked relatively shallow, no more than waist deep at the deepest points, but the current was fast, and it wasn’t something he wanted to try to cross in failing light. No, he’d have to find a crossing, and to do that, he’d need to leave the others here. Jennifer with Rodney. Jennifer with a Wraith — no, Jennifer with Rodney in a Wraith’s body. That was the only safe way to think of it, the only way he could bear to leave them. He drew his blaster before he could change his mind, held it out to Jennifer. “It’s set on stun,” he said. “I’m going to look for a place to cross. Shoot him if — if there’s any trouble.”
“Oh, for —” Rodney broke off, looking pinched and miserable.
“There won’t be,” Jennifer said, but she took the blaster. “Thank you.”
“If there is,” Ronon began, and stopped, knowing it was pointless. “Don’t hesitate,” he said at last, and turned away.
Rodney rested his head against the bole of the tree, and closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at Jennifer turning Ronon’s blaster over and over in her hands. Somehow this was not what he’d expected from a rescue. First of all, he’d assumed they’d pull it off neatly, and that he’d be back on Atlantis, safe in the infirmary while Jennifer and Carson figured out how to reverse the transformation. Though, given the way missions usually turned out, that was probably too much to expect. He’d lost track of how many plans had gone wildly wrong, starting the first day they walked through the gate. So being stranded on a strange planet three days from the Stargate was probably just more of the same. And he’d expected that the whole team would be there, John and Teyla, and probably a couple of squads of Marines — they’d brought in the heavy guns when Teyla was missing, after all. And, most of all, most painfully of all, for some reason he’d thought that if Jennifer had come to his rescue that somehow it might end up like the movies, Jennifer in his arms promising everything would be all right. He could almost smell the faint clean scent of her hair pressed against his lips, her skin giving way under his claws as he fed —
He jerked upright, appalled by the thought, by the pulsing hunger, closed his feeding hand painfully tight over the handmouth. Jennifer gave him a wary glance.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” Rodney answered. It was true enough, though not the whole truth. He felt — lost, alien in this body, caught up in instincts he still didn’t completely understand. It wasn’t that he couldn’t control himself, of course he could; it was more that the lines were blurring, Rodney McKay and Quicksilver, Atlantis’s cleverman and Death’s scientist. Jennifer was still looking at him, and he made himself smile, hoping it was more than a baring of teeth. “Lightheaded. Which, you know, really isn’t that surprising —”
“How long can a Wraith go without feeding?” Jennifer asked. Her voice was still remote, too controlled, and suddenly Rodney wanted nothing more than to smash that calm, to drive her into his arms.
“I have no idea. They made me think I was one of them, just the way we did with Michael, which, by the way, was an even more stunningly bad idea than we thought it was at the time, so they weren’t exactly telling me things that I was supposed to already know. It all depends, whether you were well fed to start with, whether you have to heal, or if you’re exerting yourself — maybe even your genetic heritage. There’s no single factor! It’s all completely individual.”
“And you last fed — a month ago, you said?”
Rodney stopped, his anger too hard to sustain. “About then, yes. Look, Jennifer — I didn’t feed myself.” That seemed important, something she needed to believe. “They fed me, first Dust, and then Ember — they were the clevermen who took care of me, who — managed — me. I mean, I know it’s — people are still dead, but —”
He stopped, unable to go on, and Jennifer gave him a wincing smile. “Oh, Rodney. I’m so sorry.”
That was something, though he would have liked the touch of her hand. “I’m all right,” he said. “I can make it to the Stargate.”
“You know,” Jennifer said. “Um, I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s not a good thing,” Rodney said. “Thinking, on a mission — that’s usually a bad sign.”
She smiled, but abstractedly, and worked Ronon’s blaster into the front of her jacket. The butt protruded at an awkward angle, but it left her with both hands free. “Carson and I have been doing a lot of work toward getting you back to normal. We’ve made good progress, and in the process, we’ve learned a lot more about Wraith physiology. And about how Wraith feed, what actually happens —” She fiddled with the zipper of the jacket, holding the blaster more securely. “That’s part of how we developed the retrovirus, you know? Well, that, and working with Todd. He was working on something like it already.” She took a deep breath. “My point is, I think this version of the retrovirus works. It worked in simulation, and I think it will work now, so I think it’s time —”
“Oh, no,” Rodney said. “Absolutely not. No, no, no, that’s a terrible idea —”
“The transformation is — in all our simulations, it’s a strenuous process,” Jennifer said. “It puts an enormous strain on the system. And you’re hungry already.”
“Hungry,” Rodney said. “Not starving.” He hoped it was true.
“You — we may need to test the virus,” Jennifer said. Her voice was perfectly steady. “We need to get you back to Atlantis in as good shape as possible.”
“No,” Rodney said again. “Jennifer —” He stopped, shaking his head. “OK, hypothetically, I see your point. And, maybe, once we’re back in Atlantis, if there are no other options, then, OK, yes, we could maybe have to revisit this. But not now. Not here. If anything goes wrong —”
“You are changing,” Jennifer said softly. “You may need to feed while you still can.”
“Ronon says we’re only one more day from the Stargate,” Rodney said. “One more day.” He held up his feeding hand, felt the mouth throb with his heartbeat, with the pulse of his hunger. “I’m still — I haven’t changed that much. Not enough to matter.” The words were bitter on his tongue.
Her mouth thinned, but she nodded reluctantly. “OK,” she said. “One more day.”
Chapter Five
Proving Ground
“What do you mean, you don’t know where they are?” Sheppard’s hands were balled into fists at his sides, and behind him Radek Zelenka was frowning deeply. Cadman just looked uncomfortable.
“I thought you had them!” Sam said incredulously. “You radioed from the hive ship. I thought you said that you had them.”
“I said I didn’t have them!” Sheppard replied. “I thought you had them. The plan was that you were supposed to beam them out!”
“I couldn’t get in range,” Sam said. “I was trying to, and I thought you said that you were on the hive ship with Ronon and Keller and Teyla.” She looked around the gateroom. “And where is Teyla anyway?”
“With Todd,” John said. “She needed to finish up some stuff. She’ll be back tomorrow. What about Rodney?”
Sam took a deep breath. “I don’t know. The hive ship blew. That’s all I know. Our shields were down completely and we had to get out ahead of the shockwave. We barely got our 302s on board in time.” Rodney was probably dead. But that had been the math all along — less and less likely he’d survive this. But Ronon and Dr. Keller… “If we’d stayed…”
Sheppard’s face was grim. “If
you’d stayed with no shields you’d have lost the ship and all aboard.”
He knew the math too. The whole crew of the Hammond, a hundred and eight lives against three, Ronon, Keller, and Rodney. And yet. It was always easier from the other side, Sam thought, one of the team at risk rather than the ones who had to write them off. But she’d been written off again and again, and she was still here.
“They might have gotten out of there somehow,” Sam said. “There were Wraith ships all over the place. If they’d stolen a ship…” She’d done it that way once with a Death Glider. Of course, they’d nearly run out of air in a decaying high Earth orbit before they were picked up.
Sheppard’s face looked gray. “Ronon’s good,” he said. “He’d do something. We’ve got to get back and search the debris field.”
“As soon as the Hammond has shields again, we’ll do that,” Sam said. She made her voice hard. “But I can’t jump into a Wraith held system with no shields. Right now we’re working around the clock on the repairs.”
Sheppard swallowed. For a moment Sam thought he was going to protest, but he didn’t. “I know,” he said, and from Sheppard that was a concession of almost unimaginable trust. He knew she’d do her best.
And she would. “I’ll go see how the repairs are coming,” she said. “And put the priority on the shields. We may be able to get underway in a few hours.” She looked at Zelenka. “Dr. Zelenka, are you able to assist?”
“Absolutely,” Zelenka said, handing his weapon and tac vest off to Cadman. “I will help.”
“I’ll go tell Woolsey,” Sheppard said, and strode off toward Woolsey’s office. Cadman hovered uncertainly in his wake.
“You can stand down,” Sam said to Cadman. “Go clean up and report to me for debriefing in two hours. I want to hear what happened, but it can wait until you’ve had a few minutes and I’ve checked on the repairs.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cadman said, looking relieved.
Sam glanced down at Radek. “Let’s go fix the Hammond.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Again.”
“Somehow it never stays fixed.”
Laura Cadman, clean and smelling like Satsuma shower gel rather than hive ship, found Colonel Carter upside down in the crawl space on deck E. “You asked me to report in two hours, ma’am,” she said to her colonel’s rear end. Carter was lying over a strut working on something beneath it, occasionally bumping heads with Dr. Kusanagi, who was also upside down on the other side of the hole.
“Cadman?” Carter righted herself, shoving her bangs back from her eyes and looking at her watch. “Two hours already?”
“I can come back, ma’am,” Laura said, though she hoped she didn’t have to. She’d really like a good night’s sleep in her own bed, but if Carter was busy she’d have to stay up and come back when it was convenient for her. Captains waited on colonels, not the other way around.
“No, it’s fine.” Carter got up. “Miko, are you good for a few minutes? I need to talk to Cadman.”
“Of course,” the upside down Dr. Kusanagi replied. “I will have this rewired before you return and then I will move on to section twelve.”
“Ok.” Carter dusted off her hands on the legs of her flight suit. “Let’s go have a chat.” She gave Laura a disconcertingly perky smile, the kind that made Laura wonder what bad news was supposed to follow it. “We can talk in my quarters.”
Worse, Laura thought. A private conversation that wouldn’t be overheard by anybody. She’d done ok on the hive ship, she thought. Well, except for not rescuing Dr. McKay who was probably dead, and managing to lose Ronon and Dr. Keller in the process. Yes, it had been Colonel Sheppard’s mission, but if she’d done something brilliant maybe they wouldn’t have gotten separated. Or maybe it was about the bears. She hadn’t meant to drop the ceiling on Dr. Robinson! That was definitely her fault. Though what was she was supposed to have done with no ammunition left and a pile of polar bears charging her, besides use a grenade? Trip them? Somebody better at this would have thought of something.
Oh God, with the gate working two ways she’d be lucky if she wasn’t on her way home tonight! She’d probably be back in Colorado Springs before breakfast. Washed out.
“Think we’re going to wash out?” The other Marine was tall and lanky, black hair barbered so ruthlessly he was almost bald, Lt. Aidan Ford, age twenty three, one year out of Georgia Tech. She was one year out of Florida State.
Two Marines, two Air Force. That was how it worked. Four lieutenants who had been given a shot at a program so top secret they hadn’t even known what it was about when they’d reported to Colorado Springs. She’d been sitting with Ford on the plane, and they’d traded snacks and speculations. Peterson Air Force Base? Why did they need two Marines? NORAD?
“Maybe it’s some kind of ceremonial duty,” Ford hypothesized. “Like the White House guards or something.”
“In Colorado Springs?” Laura looked out the window at the endless Great Plains. “Maybe they need some Marines for Air Force Academy kids to beat on.” They were kids, of course, twenty-one, not twenty-three. It made all the difference in the world.
Ford shrugged. “Maybe it’s good. Ever consider that?”
And it was. It was better than they’d ever dreamed.
They were going to other planets. They were going to other planets now, without a space ship, to battle real aliens that wanted to conquer Earth. They were going places they could never talk about, seeing things that maybe no human being had ever seen. If they didn’t wash out of training.
“Sixty-five percent of you do,” Colonel O’Neill said. He had steel gray hair and deeply graven lines on his face though he couldn’t have been fifty yet, a ramrod straight bearing even in slightly oversized battle dress and a unit baseball cap with the SGC patch embroidered on it. Laura coveted that cap. Those were special perks, special unit designations for the ones who had made it. “Sixty-five percent of you walk out of here and go back to your normal lives,” O’Neill said. “And let me tell you that you don’t get any points for being the best and the brightest here. I’ve seen a lot of smart kids.”
Standing at attention next to her in the second row of trainees, Ford frowned. He looked really worried. “Guess I don’t have anything to worry about, “ Cadman whispered. “Nobody said I was smart.”
Ford’s mouth twisted in a suppressed smile.
“You have something to say, Lt. Cadman?” O’Neill barked.
“No, sir!” Back straight, eyes front, nice and loud.
O’Neill shook his head. “Don’t shout, Lieutenant. I’m standing right here.” He went down the row. “And you may wish you’d washed out. Because if you do, your chances of being alive in two years are a lot greater. So if any of you want to voluntarily withdraw at this point, there will be no mark on your record.”
Ford’s brows twitched. As if, Laura thought. You’re going to tell me everything I ever read about is real and think I’m going to walk away?
Afterwards, in the hummer on the way out to the first proving ground, Ford drew her and the two Air Force guys who they were assigned with into a huddle. “We’ve got to stick together,” Ford said. “That’s the key. Teamwork. They didn’t assign us in four man units randomly. They think we’ve got complimentary skills. So we need to put our stuff on the table and work it out. What do you do, Cadman?”
“I blow things up,” she said.
They spent the next three days screwing up a variety of scenarios. There was a hostage rescue in which they were supposed to save this guy named Quinn from aliens, only Ford shot him instead.
“Lieutenant Ford,” O’Neill said with scathing sarcasm, “Your peerless brilliance has just resulted in the death of the man you came to save. Any questions?”
“No, sir!” Ford replied, eyes front.
“And stop shouting.”
There was an ambush scenario in which the Jaffa, Teal’c, wiped the floor with all of them except Laura, who blew herself up. Accidenta
lly.
“Cadman, that thing has a timer for a reason!” O’Neill barked. “You’re dead. And so is the rest of your team. Once you set the timer, you have to actually leave.” He walked off shaking his head.
Sitting on the ground outside together, Laura took a swig from her water bottle. “We’re doomed,” she said.
Ford looked at her sideways. “So you were assigned to be the pessimist in our group?”
“I’m just saying that we haven’t won a single scenario,” she began. A line of hummers was pulling into the proving ground, O’Neill walking toward them. In a second everything changed, a swift exchange of gunfire that left bodies on the ground, Laura crawling through the dust and scant cover, Ford at her side.
“Foothold situation,” O’Neill gasped, one hand to the oozing blood at his side. “The SGC has been infiltrated by the Goa’uld. Get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Laura said, fumbling for a dressing. “We can’t do that, sir. With all due respect.”
It was just her and Ford in the end, dragging O’Neill back to the base so that he could show them how to rig the self destructs that would prevent the Goa’uld from bringing through an army, just her and Ford when they had to leave him unconscious while they went to blow the dialing computers to prevent the gate being used, while they set the charges that would kill the Goa’uld who had taken over the base, including its host, Major Carter. And just incidentally themselves.
Sorry, Nana. Sorry, Pops, Laura thought, crouching in the control room. She wished they would at least know what she’d done, but she supposed it never worked that way. Her eyes met Ford’s.
“Do it,” he said, and she pressed the firing button.
Nothing happened. And for a long moment her only thought was disappointment.
“Well done, Lieutenants,” a voice said over the loudspeaker.
STARGATE ATLANTIS: Secrets (Book 5 in the Legacy series) Page 5