by Graham, Jo
“I’m still reading inactive connections from the initiators to the Chair,” Sam said on the radio.
“Shut it down.” Woolsey’s quiet voice carried.
With a glance at Rodney, Radek moved the indicators down.
“Why?” Rodney pulled himself up, towering over Woolsey even with his modest height.
“The IOA has suspended all repairs and systems testing indefinitely.” Woolsey lifted his chin. “Other than routine maintenance of vital systems, we are to shut down all additional work, pending a full review.”
“I’m not reading any power down here,” Sam said on the radio. “Radek, I have a full drop off.”
“Colonel Carter, I’ve shut the test down,” Woolsey said into the radio. “And you might want to come up here.”
“Why in the hell would they do that?” Rodney demanded. “We have things we have to get done! We can’t sit around for months while they review everything! We need to get these systems operable again.”
“The IOA does not agree,” Woolsey said stiffly. “Atlantis is staying on Earth, and therefore the hyperdrive repairs are academic. Especially when they consider the ‘potential hazards of working haphazardly on alien systems.’”
Radek swore softly under his breath, his glasses trembling on the end of his nose.
“Working haphazardly on alien systems?” Rodney shouted. “What do they think we’ve been doing for the last five years? I’m not going to blow up the city fixing a damn power conduit!” Rodney cupped his headset. “Carter! Tell him!”
“Colonel Carter has no jurisdiction here,” Woolsey said. “This is an IOA matter, not an Air Force one. All repairs and research are suspended.”
“Research?” Rodney shouted. “Isn’t the whole point of having an Atlantis expedition to do research? Isn’t that why we wanted an alien city in the first place?”
Woolsey shifted from foot to foot, but his voice was firm. “It’s not my decision, Rodney. Everything is to shut down except routine and necessary maintenance. For the foreseeable future.”
“We are not going back.” Zelenka’s soft words fell like a death knell. “That’s what this is about. It’s over.”
Woolsey looked down at him seated at his laptop. “I’m afraid so.”
“They’re just going to waste everything we’ve done,” Rodney said. “What are they going to do?”
“Conduct a review in a methodical fashion prior to a decision making process about the long-term process of dismantling and examining the Ancient systems in question,” Woolsey quoted.
“They will take it apart,” Radek breathed. “We are not fixing it. They are dismembering her over twenty years.” His voice choked, and he bent his head over the screen, blinking.
Sam Carter came running up the stairs. “What’s going on?”
Rodney’s eyes snapped. “The IOA is shutting Atlantis down. No research, no repairs, pending their asinine review. And then they’re going to start dismantling.”
Sam’s mouth opened and shut.
“Don’t just stand there!” Rodney shouted at her. “Do something!”
“What can I do?”
“This matter is not under Colonel Carter’s jurisdiction,” Woolsey said again. “This is an IOA decision. Colonel Carter doesn’t even work for the IOA. Doctor, you need to calm down.”
“No, I don’t.” Rodney’s head was suddenly absolutely clear. “I am not taking this city apart, and I will not stand down.”
Radek looked up at him. “Rodney, you have to.”
“No.” Rodney stripped off his jacket and thrust it into Woolsey’s arms. “Because I quit.”
“Rodney…” Radek breathed.
“I quit,” Rodney said. “I won’t do it. I’m a civilian contractor, and I can walk. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He spun around on his heel, heading for the stairs. “You’ll have to find someone else to dismember Atlantis. It won’t be me!”
Chapter Five
Once in a Thousand Years
Torren was finally asleep—not in the crib, of course, but tucked up securely on the couch, worn out by the day and the inevitable meltdown. John hadn’t managed to get his clothes off him, but he had stealthily removed shoes and socks and tucked the blanket firmly over him. He picked a cold French fry from the remains of the room service dinner. Torren hadn’t eaten anything Teyla had packed for him, and maybe the ice cream hadn’t been the best idea, but at least it had gotten something into him. And it had calmed him down enough to sleep.
He looked back at the half bottle of red wine, open but untasted, wondering if maybe he should go ahead and have a glass after all. He’d planned to wait for Teyla, but there was no telling how long the post dinner discussions might last…
The door opened, and he started to his feet, finger to his lips in warning. Teyla saw and nodded, letting the door close very gently behind her. Caught there in the light from the door, unfamiliar in her sober DC suit, she was elegant and strange and maybe somebody he didn’t actually know at all. That was a shock, after five and a half years; but there would always be unsounded depths in her. Like the things she hadn’t shared, like Kanaan, like her plans for a child… He made himself breathe, swallowing that sorrow, as she stooped over the couch to check on Torren, and then came past him into the bedroom of the suite, stepping out of her pumps as she went.
“He would not sleep otherwise?”
John shook his head. “He’s had a hard day.”
Teyla gave him a sideways smile, and reached for a French fry. “So have we all.”
“Any luck?”
Teyla tipped her head from side to side. “Perhaps. It is very difficult to tell.” She gave a mocking smile. “Mr. Woolsey thinks it was more effective when I wore—native dress.”
“Goddammit,” John said, under his breath, and Teyla’s smile widened.
“It might be so, but it is also more conspicuous, or so General O’Neill has said. Mr. Nechayev, however, doesn’t seem to care.”
“I bet he doesn’t,” John said. He couldn’t feel jealous—wouldn’t be jealous, he didn’t have the right. He reached for the wine and the two big balloon glasses. “Want some?”
“Please.” Teyla slipped off her jacket, settled back into the one chair and stretched her feet.
John poured just enough into each glass, handed her one and took the other for himself, automatically swirling it so that the wine left faint traces on the wide bowl. He sniffed it, too—force of old habit, force of being in DC again; Nancy had trained him to that—and Teyla held out her glass in salute.
“Only one more day.”
“Yeah.” John took a sip of the wine, memory stabbing through him. It wasn’t something that had happened, either, which seemed unfair, but a dream, a memory of delusion: him and Teyla drinking wine in candlelight, a last thing to hold on to when he couldn’t hold on to Ronon, both of them trapped in the rubble of Michael’s lab. He saw Teyla frown, knew she’d seen the shadow cross his face, and forced something like a smile. Her lips tightened, but she said nothing, and John drained the wine in a single gulp.
“My turn in the box tomorrow,” he said, and knew his voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat. “Joint Chiefs briefing, with General O’Neill in charge.”
“Yes.”
He set the glass down. “So. I’d better get going.”
“Yes,” Teyla said. Her face was grave, and she didn’t move, still leaning back in the hotel armchair with her elegant legs stretched out in front of her, the glass of wine in one hand. There was a flaw in her silk blouse, a pulled thread just above her left breast. This wasn’t what he’d imagined, but it was painfully too close, and he nodded once, knowing he looked as weird and awkward as he felt.
“Well. Good night.”
“Good night, Colonel,” she said, and he was in the hallway before he realized there might have been sadness in her voice.
* * *
Ronon was getting just a little bit tired of Marines. Or maybe i
t was just a bad batch. You ran into that sometimes, guys who couldn’t adjust to the people who came through the gate, and all you could do was stick them somewhere else and hope they didn’t plan to make soldiering a career. Except that was Sateda, not here. Here that didn’t apply, because the Earth people—Taur’i—whatever their name was, and why they couldn’t agree on one was beyond him—the Earth people kept their gate a secret and didn’t go trading with other worlds. So the Marines didn’t get much practice dealing with strangers. But he was getting tired of smacking them into respect.
He filled his tray without really paying attention—pizza, apple, cookies—and only as he reached the end of the line realized that he could have had something more interesting. Ever since they had landed, there had been paper packets with normal eating utensils among the clutter of knives and forks, and he didn’t have to worry about embarrassing Sheppard or anyone by not knowing the proper etiquette. It was too much trouble to go back; he shrugged to himself, and found a table in the corner. From it, he could see through two sets of glass doors to the sea beyond. It didn’t look like Atlantis’s sea, or smell like it, but the steady breeze was at least something like normal. Like home.
Once in a thousand years the sea/something’d the moon at my window.
He froze, wondering where the hell that had come from, but he couldn’t lie to himself. It was one of the poems he had learned in school, the last year, the year before he’d joined the army, well on his way to a commission and a life to be proud of. He’d learned two thousand lines that year, classic and modern, and been top of his draft cadre as well—and he couldn’t remember two lines correctly any more. He frowned, concentrating, the pizza forgotten in his hand.
Once in a thousand years the sea—?
No: once in a something thousand years, the sea…
“May I join you?”
Ronon blinked, looked up to see Colonel Carter standing patiently on the opposite side of the table, tray in hand. “Sure,” he said, and wondered how long she’d been standing there.
He should have risen, he thought, as she settled herself across from him. Juniors stand for their superior officers, and if he wanted to get respect from the Marines, he’d need to show it. And it wasn’t exactly hard to respect Carter.
“Thanks.” Carter busied herself with her lunch, arranging the dishes so that she could put the tray aside. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Oh?”
“Yep.” Carter smiled, and Ronon wondered if the laconic echo was deliberate. “I have a proposition for you.”
This was the moment he’d been expecting and dreading, the one he’d been rehearsing for when he couldn’t sleep, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Atlantis isn’t going anywhere,” Carter said. Her voice was gentle, regretful, even, but very definite. “The Hammond, on the other hand, is going back to Pegasus before the end of the year. I’d like to have you on my team.”
Ronon took a deep breath. He was still holding the pizza, he realized, and set it aside with a grimace, wiping his hand on his pants. “To do what? Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, Colonel Carter, but I’m not a scientist. I’m not even a soldier, by your reckoning. I’m muscle, and that—” He looked deliberately past her, toward the group of young Marines clattering into the mess hall. “That you’ve got plenty of.”
“We’ll pass on my reckoning for now,” Carter said. She paused. “Can I ask you a question?”
Ronon shrugged, though he could feel his hackles rising. “Sure.”
“What did you do before the military?”
If he hadn’t been thinking about it already, he probably wouldn’t have answered, but the fragment of poetry had loosened something in him. “I was a kid. In school.”
“Me, too.” Something like a smile flickered across Carter’s face. “What did you study? Was it a military prep course, or regular school?”
Ronon looked at his hands, at the tattoo patterning his left wrist, gift of a dead man, a dead traitor. He should keep his mouth shut, but not to answer—it would be disrespect, and, anyway, it was something he’d been proud of once. “It was an exam school. Not just military, though the kids who were planning to join up were encouraged to apply. I passed in on both exams, graduated Third Scholar. I was supposed to get my commission after I’d done my required service.” He shrugged again. “The Wraith got there first.”
“That’s impressive,” Carter said.
Ronon searched the open face for some hint of irony, and found none.
“But it doesn’t surprise me,” she went on. “I figured as much from working with you on Atlantis. Look, I’m not asking you to join the team because I need more muscle. You’re right, I’ve got more than enough of that. And I’m not asking you out of pity. If you want to go back to Pegasus, you can come with us, no strings attached. I’m asking you because you’re a damn good man, a damn good leader. I watched you training our Marines, teaching them to deal with the Wraith, with the Genii—not just tactics, but how they think, what makes them tick. That’s what I want you for.”
“I’m not officer material,” Ronon said. “Not any more.”
“You were,” Carter answered. “If Sateda hadn’t been attacked, you’d be one now. You’d be a commander—if you were one of mine, you’d be fast-tracked for promotion.” She paused. “You can still be that man.”
Ronon sat very still. He had not imagined this was something he still wanted, not until it was put into words, spoken out loud for everyone to hear. He made himself take a breath, and then another, concentrating on the movement of his ribs, the pull of the muscles, the hint of salt that carried through some open door. She was right, he would have been a captain, at least—husband and father, too, that thought like a knife to the heart. “That man is dead.”
“Is he?” Carter waited.
“I—” Ronon looked away from her implacable stare. “I don’t know.”
“Find out,” she said, gently.
“I can’t join your army,” Ronon said, but it was token protest, and they both knew it.
“No. You’d be an independent contractor, working for the Air Force.” She smiled, as though at some private joke. “A technical adviser.”
Once in a thousand years the sea/ smothers the moon at my window/ opens a gate in my heart: the triplet came suddenly complete in his head, and with it the face of the poet who’d written it. Not a classic, or even an accepted modern, but a university poet, bright and beautiful and dead…
“When Sateda fell,” he said abruptly, “Kell—our local commander—threw everybody he had against the Wraith. Regulars, Guard, Elites, the neighborhood volunteer squads and the firemen and the poets’ battalion from the university. All to buy time to get himself to safety.” He closed his eyes for an instant, but made himself go on. “I bribed one of his subcommanders to get my—” There wasn’t a word that translated exactly; he chose one he thought had the right resonances. “—my fiancée onto his staff anyway, to get her out. She wouldn’t go. But that’s the choice I made.”
Carter regarded him gravely. “I hope to offer you better choices.”
“Not always possible,” Ronon answered, but the ache in his chest had eased.
“No.” Carter gave him a rueful smile. “But one can try.”
“I’ll try the Hammond,” Ronon said. He stood up, reached for his tray. “Short contract, no strings? If it works out for both of us—I’ll stay.”
“Fair enough,” Carter answered, and turned her attention back to her food.
Ronon turned away, the tray balanced in one hand. Beyond the windows, a fogbank was moving across the water, the pillars of the great red bridge standing high above the cloud. It was a better choice than he’d expected, a chance to go back and fight the Wraith, to help other people fight the Wraith. It would do for now.
* * *
Jennifer glanced around the infirmary, seeing the gaps where equipment had been removed, the strange faces replacing her usua
l team. It was all part of the transition, especially now that Atlantis wasn’t going anywhere, but she still didn’t have to like it. Particularly since she couldn’t seem to convince the military people not to turn off the Ancient equipment unless they had the Ancient gene themselves and could turn it back on again.
She glared at the blank screen, not even bothering to run her hand over the touchplate. Up until a few days ago, Rodney had been going out of his way to take care of things for her—mostly, he said, because he didn’t have anything else to do—but since he’d resigned, there were fewer options available. No one in sight had the gene, except maybe the Air Force captain—he was new—but she wasn’t about to admit to him that she needed help. Not all of the military sneered at civilians, sneered at her, but she’d seen enough of it since they’d landed that she wasn’t about to give them any opportunities.
“Need a hand with that, then?”
Beckett’s voice broke her reverie, and she turned with a relieved smile.
“If you would.”
Beckett waved one hand over the sensor, and the machine lit, a cascade of data pouring down its display before it steadied. Jennifer eyed it warily, decided everything was in fact normal, and looked back at Beckett.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” Beckett sounded preoccupied, half of his attention on the tablet computer cradled in his other arm, and Jennifer couldn’t help frowning.
“Is everything all right?” She lowered her voice, not wanting the Air Force man to hear, and Beckett matched her tone.
“Oh, aye, well enough.” He paused. “I’m going back to Pegasus, you know.”
“I didn’t.” Jennifer forced a smile. “I’m not that surprised, though.”
“I didn’t think you would be.” Beckett glanced at his tablet, made a note on the screen. “You know—you’ve seen what we’re facing there, what needs to be done. I can’t turn my back on that.”
She nodded. She’d felt the same way just on Earth, working for Doctors Without Borders and then for WHO specialty teams: there was always something more, one more clinic to run, one more surgery to set up, one more shipment of drugs to provide, even though you knew it was never possible to do enough… Carson had an entire galaxy to worry about, and his own mistakes to repair.