Mirror, Mirror

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Letting go of Marcon who was nothing but a wheezing bundle of fear now, Ronon pushed past her. His fingertips played over cool steel. No hinges, no lock. He grimaced, then felt for the wrist control he'd taken from the lab technician. The red button was the second from the left in the bottom row, he remembered that. Fumbling across the small keyboard, counting, he thought he'd found it, pushed.

  Nothing.

  And there would be no time for a second attempt. Below, the bootfalls and shouts of the STs were getting louder rapidly.

  Marcon whimpered, suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Ronon's arm. "It's her they want," he hissed. "You understand, Ronon? They want the woman. She's the one who came through the Stargate. All you have to do is give her to them. A push will do. At the very least it'll buy you and me time to escape."

  A whole disbelieving whirl of thoughts raced through Ronon's mind and all at once crystallized into realization. Marcon was compromised. He would be the first to die once the STs caught up, and he knew it.

  "Good idea," Ronon whispered. "But mine's better."

  He rammed a flat palm into Marcon's chest, his rage fueling the force of the punch. The chairman of the Lantean Security Council toppled backward and tumbled down the stairs in an uncontrollable fall. Ronon wished he could have seen it, but hearing the screams wasn't bad.

  "What was that?" murmured Teyla.

  "He must have slipped."

  "Clumsy. Sounds like he's keeping our friends busy, though."

  "Yeah."

  Broken-necked or still alive, Marcon would, at the very least, block the stairs for a while.

  Another minute bought. Ronon tried the wrist control again. This time the steel barrier obligingly did what the wall in the lab had done and dissolved, revealing a vast room. Squinting against a sudden onslaught of brightness, muted and erratic as it was, he blew out a soft sigh of relief.

  "We're good to go?" Teyla asked softly.

  She'd barely finished speaking when an explosion rocked the building and all but deafened him. Then, after a heartbeat of utter silence and through the ringing in his ears, Ronon heard muffled screams riding on the back of the detonation. The area immediately in front of him was filled with swirling smoke and dust, and he now recognized the significance of that warm, unsteady light that penetrated the gloom: fire. Without another word, he yanked Teyla through the opening, and sealed it behind them.

  "Where are we?" Then she must have smelled it. A flicker of panic danced across her face. "Fire," she hissed.

  "Yes."

  Gradually the haze of dust and smoke left behind by the detonation rose, carried upward by hot air and dissipating, probably through some vent in the ceiling. The room drifted into focus like a stretch of landscape emerging from a bank of fog. It was devastated. Debris littered the floor; pieces of metal, charred and so grotesquely twisted that they offered no clue as to what had been destroyed, chunks of machinery ripped from their fastenings and shattered like toys-and bodies. Most casualties seemed to be civilian, poor bastards living in the slums, pressed into labor here for a wage that barely allowed them to feed their families.

  Suddenly a shrill, drawn-out whistle ripped through the air and resolved in a new detonation that shook the ground and nearly knocked him off his feet. Stunned, he realized that the first blast he'd heard couldn't possibly have been the one that had destroyed this facility-if it had been, he and Teyla would be part of the carnage now. Multiple explosions, three at least. It seemed the government district was under attack, either from the homegrown resistance, consolidated at last, or from those outside hostiles the Ancestors had styled into a bugbear.

  Either way, the timing was a gift. The STs would have better things to do than chase a couple of fugitives, and he and Teyla could simply disappear in the general mayhem.

  "Let's go." He turned to Teyla, started to see her pale as death, sightless eyes fixed on some vision of horror that had to be at least as bad as this. "Teyla! You okay?"

  "The Cataclysm," she breathed. "It's come again. Pima was right."

  The what? And who was Pima?

  Fascinating though the answer might be, they didn't have time for this. He clutched her shoulders, shook her. "Teyla, snap out of it! It's just an attack. You've seen dozens of them. We've got to make the best of the confusion, steal a ship, and get away."

  She didn't seem to hear him. "That noise. The whistling... In my timeline Charybdis practically destroyed the Pegasus galaxy. Planets were torn from their orbit, stars turned to supernovas, moons fell into their primaries. Almost everywhere it began with devastating meteor showers... it was like living in a war zone..."

  "Teyla, I'm sure-"

  "I'm telling you, I know that noise! This place has been destroyed, yes?"

  "Yes."

  "Look up! What do you see?"

  Ronon gazed up, if only because he figured it that humoring her was the quickest way to stop this nonsense. Above him the air had cleared, leaving a plain view of the hall's rafters. What he'd presumed to be a vent drawing off smoke was in fact a massive hole in the ceiling, its edges still smoldering. No missile could have done this.

  "Perhaps you're right. It doesn't matter."

  Not waiting for her reply, he picked her up, slung her over his shoulder. Between the meteors and the STs coming up the stairs, they didn't have a second to lose. Teyla having to navigate the debris would slow them down too much. From outside screams and wailing and the screech of sirens seeped into the hangar. Inside the only sounds were Ronon's footfalls and labored breathing, the occasional clatter when he trod loose a bit of debris, and the rustle of cooling embers. As far as possible he kept to wherever the floor was clear of rubble, racing a zigzag obstacle course for the doors he'd spotted at the far end of the hall.

  He was less than five yards out, when he heard shouting behind him. The STs had arrived. The next moment, an energy blast missed him narrowly and slammed into the wall, tearing out chunks of mortar and masonry. No quaint man-to-man weaponry for the STs; their job was to kill efficiently and at a distance. But even they weren't immune to the carnage. After that first blast there was the briefest of ceasefires while the STs struggled with their surprise and shock. Ronon used the respite to fling himself and Teyla across those last few yards, through the door, and out into a huge loading yard.

  The sky was ablaze, glowing in a deep, vicious red, offset by low clouds that loomed black where they didn't suddenly bloom with brightness. It looked like sheet lightning until the meteors burst from the clouds, crisscrossing the air with trails of fire and smoke and hurtling toward the ground. It was beautiful, in a horrific kind of way.

  Ronon tore himself away from the spectacle. By the dock along the side of the yard a dozen or so freight gliders stood lined up, never to be loaded now. Their hulls were streaked with soot and peppered with dents and small holes; several of them sat dead on the ground, their engines incapacitated. Desperate for cover, Ronon headed for the freighters. The master stevedore, goods list still in hand, lay on the dock; a couple of his men, barely alive, slumped between two gliders, moaning. Just past them, wedged in between the freighters and dwarfed by them, a small private ground glider was parked.

  The sight almost made him laugh; never mind cover, they'd got themselves a getaway vehicle. The glider was hovering, which meant its anti-gray drive was still operational. The glider's owner hadn't fared quite so well. He still sat in the pilot's seat, killed by the same meteor fragment that had left a hole in the back of the glider.

  Ronon lifted Teyla over the side and dumped her in the passenger seat; then he pulled the dead man from the glider and jumped into the pilot's seat. He released the parking safety, and the small vessel leaped up a few inches and sluggishly nosed forward. The drive was operational alright, but it was running less than smoothly. Then again, right now he'd settle for a mule provided it got them out of there. As if to confirm that thought, shouts and running footsteps announced that the STs had caught up and were fanning out to s
earch for them.

  "Hang on!" he said to Teyla, offered a prayer to any deity that would listen, and slammed the throttle all the way forward.

  The glider's engine howled in protest, then the vehicle shot out from between the freighters and across the yard, provoking shouts of rage from the STs. A barrage of blasts followed in their wake. Before Ronon could react, the glider's forward speed all but stalled. To make up for it, the vessel shot ten feet straight up into the air. It was like riding an unbroken horse.

  White-lipped, Teyla clutched the edge of her seat, but she never said a word. She could hear those energy blasts coming as clearly as Ronon saw them, and probably thought the glider's erratic behavior was due to evasive maneuvering. No point in bursting that bubble.

  Teeth clenched, Ronon fiddled with the controls, unsure of whether or not it would help or cause a crash. He could count the occasions on which he'd piloted one of these things on the fingers of one hand. Suddenly the drive stopped its dissatisfied whine, changed pitch to an altogether more reassuring growl, and the glider began to respond to the controls. Ronon forced it into a steep climb, banked and sped for the corner of the building and out of the range of the STs weapons.

  As they soared over the roof, the full extent of the devastation leaped into view. Below, the government district and the city stood in flames and what wasn't burning had been pulverized by the barrage. Ronon sucked in a sharp breath. The scene reminded him of nothing so much as the images of Sateda that probe had transmitted back to Atlantis. Amid the ruin, survivors scrambled for the spurious safety of the buildings. By the looks of it, even a bunker wouldn't protect them.

  Teyla had heard his gasp. "It's bad," she said. It wasn't a question.

  "Worse," he murmured.

  And the meteors kept coming. He swung the glider into a sharp turn to avoid one heading directly for them and then set it back on an easterly course toward the fringes of the government district and the military base.

  "Where are we going?" This time it was a question.

  "To steal a spaceship"

  CHAPTER 14

  Charybdis +4

  he climb had been over slick, jagged rock, complete with water cascading toward them, and Elizabeth was soaked to her skin. The hem of her skirt was slapping around her calves, feeling colder and soggier with every slap.

  "Be careful not to get caught up here." Torch in one hand, Major Sheppard crouched in the narrow cleft at the top of the incline. "It's a pretty tight squeeze, and the rocks are sharp."

  Yeah. Elizabeth's fingers had the cuts to prove it. No need to remind her.

  "Do you want a hand?" he asked.

  "No. I'm fine. Just get out of the way there

  Even to her own ears her voice sounded dull, weighed down by the thousands of tons of mountain above their heads. Which was not the best of thoughts to hang on to. With a grunt she pulled herself up another two feet, then another, clamped her hand over the edge of the drop, wiggled and kicked her way up into the cleft, crawled through, and finally tumbled out into yet another rock chamber. She'd long lost any sense of how many hours they'd been on the move. Somehow time had become submerged in an endless sea of misery-aches, fatigue, cold, wetness-together with the quickly fading memory of the last rest they'd taken.

  Same as the sight of daylight for that matter. Her best guess was that they were no nearer the surface than they had been in the chamber where John had woken up at last-if indeed they were even that close. Though several of the passages they'd come to had led uphill initially, virtually all of them had dipped sooner or later, and she had a distinct sense of being deeper inside the mountain than ever before. So far they'd been spared the flashfloods -perhaps the hail hadn't melted yet?-but on more than one occasion they'd been wading hip-deep in ice water. Compared to that, the little trickle down the rock wall was hardly worth writing home about.

  Elizabeth pushed herself to all fours and rolled sideways into a sit. The others obviously felt the same as she; they sat slumped against the walls, eyes closed, and there seemed to be a tacit agreement that, for the next fifteen years at least, nobody would walk another step. With a sigh that fell just short of contentment, she tucked her legs tighter to her body and wrapped her arms around her knees for warmth. Besides, the chamber really was too small for four people; if she tried to stretch her legs, she'd kick John, though it was questionable whether he'd even notice. He looked half dead, and perhaps, she thought grimly, he actually was. For a while now she'd been worrying whether he'd sustained something worse than a mere concussion; a skull fracture, for instance. Not that there was a damn thing any of them could do about it...

  The thought, disheartening as it was, gradually morphed into some kind of warm fluffiness. Vaguely noting that, at some point, she must have shut her eyes, Elizabeth let herself drift toward that happy place. After all, she'd deserved some fluffiness. She'd just-

  "Don't fall asleep!" John might be half dead, but he still could rap out an order if he had to. Somehow he'd even managed to hone that edge of command back into his voice.

  Elizabeth's eyes shot open, and she squinted at him. "I wasn't going to-"

  "Don't fall asleep," he said more gently. "None of us can afford to. We've got to keep moving as long as we've still got light."

  He cast a meaningful glance at the torch, which had burned down to a small stub. It was a minor miracle that it had lasted this far, but sooner or later that small stub would be gone, too, and they had nothing on them that was anywhere near dry enough to use as fuel.

  "I'm hungry," the alternate Elizabeth offered and added with a surprising pinch of irony, "You promised me a dinner party."

  "It got cancelled." Wincing in pain, Major Sheppard mas saged his leg. "The hostess was spaced out."

  Hungry. Or ravenous more like. For some unfathomable reason, Elizabeth had omitted starvation from her list of selfish little miseries. It should have come right at the top, because she was just about ready to start chewing on her toes.

  "Okay. Let's move out." Heavily leaning against the wall, John groped his way back to his feet. He gave a smile that was as fake as a thirty dollar note. "The sooner we get to the surface, the sooner we can go forage."

  Never' sprang to mind... Elizabeth nixed that thought as defeatist. If the Johns could go on in the state they were in, so could she. Hell, even her alternate, who was at least twenty years her senior and decidedly not compos mentis, wasn't complaining. Much. She rose awkwardly, trying to shrink away from her wet clothes. No longer protected, that moderately warm part between her chest and knees was cooling down rapidly, so getting on the move again probably wasn't such a terrible thing.

  John had let Major Sheppard take point, followed by Elizabeth's double. "Go on," he said, waiting for her to squeeze past.

  "No way." Elizabeth shook her head for emphasis. "We've been through this already. You're not bringing up the rear. I'd like to be in a position to catch you when you pass out."

  "Elizabeth-"

  "That's an order, John." In the disappearing light from the torch, she saw him stare at her in disbelief and grinned. "Go on, or we'll lose them."

  His only answer was a brief, reluctant nod, then he turned and followed the two alternates.

  The passage continued to lead uphill. Elizabeth filed it away as a bit of random information, at the same time refusing to get her hopes up. You could be forgiven for thinking the entire tunnel system was like one of those drawings by M.C. Escher, where staircases went up and down simultaneously. Maybe the whole thing was just a giant optical illusion, and-

  Yeah, sure. No raving, Elizabeth. Not yet, at any rate.

  Up ahead that dim, increasingly reddish glow from the torch in Major Sheppard's hand came to a halt and seemed to be sucked up by something vast and dark beyond comprehension. As soon as she arrived at his side, she understood, and despite cold and hunger and exhaustion the sight left her breathless with awe. They were standing in the middle of a rock cathedral. It was impossible to tel
l how far beyond the reach of their torch the ceiling vaulted, but somehow the shroud of shadows overhead managed to convey an impression of absolute enormity. Stone pillars soared toward it, organic things without pattern or regularity, their tops lost in darkness. Throughout the entire chamber, the rock showed crystalline inclusions that threw back the meager torchlight and sparkled like diamonds.

  "My God, it's beautiful," whispered Elizabeth's alternate. Her voice had lost that grating little-girlish chirp, and she seemed to be back, as though this magnificent space had somehow released her from madness. "It makes you want to pray...,,

  At that moment the torch leaped into a final flicker and went out at last. Perhaps praying wasn't such a bad idea, Elizabeth thought, gasping with shock. She wasn't afraid of the dark, never had been, but this darkness, native to a place that never had seen sunlight, was different.

  It wasn't... dark.

  The chamber was glowing. Swirls of brightness wreathed the pillars, up and up, until they dissolved in a shining haze high above her head. They flowed up the walls and meandered across the floor like an unearthly meadow of flowers. Their sheen reminded her of bioluminescence, but that wasn't quite right, was it? This was more brilliant, and the color was subtly different.

  "Somebody please tell me it's not just me," murmured John. "We're all seeing this, right'?"

  "Oh yeah." Major Sheppard dropped the remains of the torch. It struck the floor in a burst of clatter that echoed and amplified through the cathedral's vault until it sounded like an avalanche. "Sorry," he said when the racket had died down.

  "Don't do that again!" John ground out, grimacing.

  "Don't worry. I'm fresh out of torches." The Major had moved over to a pillar and was picking at the crystals. "Whatever it is, it looks valuable," he observed at last and dryly added, "We're rich."

  Elizabeth had a sudden, delicious vision of scraping a handful of crystals from the walls and hitting the nearest drive-through. Five double cheeseburgers with everything... provided there still were any drive-throughs in existence somewhere in the universe. Then something odd she'd been noticing all along pushed its way into the forefront of her consciousness and the appetizing cheeseburger vision popped like a soap bubble.