“Up there are the old cells. That’s where I’m guessing Sumner’s got your people.”
Teal’c nodded and eyed the climb. It wouldn’t be that difficult, except for the need for silence. “There is a grave risk of dislodging stones,” he said.
Sheppard nodded. “So we go slow and quiet.”
“Right,” O’Neill muttered. He looked at Teal’c. “Go ahead. I’ll cover you both.”
Teal’c slung his P90 and studied the approach for a moment, then heaved himself up the unstable rock. A few stones crumbled away beneath his boots, rock slithering on rock, but there were no loud crashes. He paused just below the opening, setting feet and hands more securely, then slowly raised his head until he could see over the edge.
It was a cell block, all right, though the space was dark and the cells were empty and there was no indication that the force fields that should seal the doors were working. An expedition lantern was overturned at the base of the stairs that led presumably toward the surface, but there was no other sign that the area was in use.
Stones shifted beside him, and Sheppard eased himself up. “Crap.”
Teal’c ignored him, frowning. Surely there was something wrong with the cell door — surely they should not all have been left sagging open like that. He pulled himself up, put one knee on the edge and hoisted himself out of the hole. Another stone slipped away, and he froze, but there was no movement from the stairs.
He darted across, peered up to see only empty space, cloudy sky and a patch of dirt, and stepped back to examine the cells. The doors had been held by padlocks, but they had been taken off and left in the dirt — no, he thought, they’d been cut, and by some sort of energy beam. He risked putting his flashlight on the lowest setting, and examined the corners of the nearest cell. Dirt and stones, the detritus of centuries, and then a bright flash of color that resolved to the wrapper of an energy bar. It was not positive proof, of course — the expedition had probably also stocked chocolate chip flavored granola bars — but certainly it was a strong indication that Colonel Carter had been here.
He returned to the hole and let himself back down the slope, Sheppard at his heels, but said nothing until they had retreated around the sharp corner that blocked both light and sound.
“They’re not there?” O’Neill glared. “Damn it, we have to find where Sumner’s got them —”
“I do not think they are prisoners any longer, O’Neill,” Teal’c said. “They were there, yes — or at least Colonel Carter was there, and as the other cells were in use, I think we can say that Daniel Jackson was there also. But the locks were cut, by a beam weapon or perhaps some Ancient device, and that surely indicated that it was not Colonel Sumner’s men who released them.”
“Unless it was the Wraith,” O’Neill said.
“The Wraith don’t do things quietly,” Sheppard said. “That would explain why Teyla didn’t hear any more threats from Sumner overnight.”
“If it had been the Wraith,” Teal’c said, “I believe there would have been more signs of a struggle. I do not believe Colonel Carter would have allowed them to take her without a fight.”
“Zelenka must have gotten them out,” Sheppard said.
“Then why wasn’t he at the rendezvous?” O’Neill demanded.
Sheppard shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably they got stuck somewhere when the Wraith attacked. But that means we need to get back there ourselves.”
O’Neill looked as though he wanted to object, and Teal’c could hardly blame him. He, too, would rather be doing something active, either searching for their teammates or taking action against Sumner and his men. But Sheppard was right, their first priority was to reconnect with the others, and the most efficient way — the only sure way — of doing that was to wait patiently at the rendezvous point.
“Let us go,” he said, and fell into step at Sheppard’s back.
O’Neill gave the steep slope a last unhappy look. “I hope to hell you’re right, Major.”
“So do I,” Sheppard said.
Teal’c was right, of course, Jack told himself, but it didn’t do much to ease the nagging sense of frustration. They had made it back to the rendezvous point without incident, were sitting now in its shadows, nibbling energy bars and the Athosian equivalent that looked and tasted like pressed and salted dates. They couldn’t do anything until Zelenka showed up, and there were good reasons he wouldn’t move until dark; the only good thing was that they weren’t expected to provide a diversion. Sheppard had passed that message across the river, pinpoint light winking from between the trees, and now all they could do was wait.
That was easier said than done. Jack extended his leg, easing his knee, and looked up through the broken roof. It was late afternoon, the sky hazed with pale cloud, thickening toward the west. Rain toward morning, Sheppard had said, grimacing, and Jack had to admit he didn’t like the idea of trying to get a pack of civilians back through the forest in the rain. Assuming that was Teyla’s plan: Sheppard had been pretty evasive all along. Jack couldn’t entirely blame him for that, but it wasn’t helping anything.
Something flickered in the pale sky, a streak like a shadow, so fast it was more motion than object. Jack sat up quickly. Too fast for a bird, even if there were any birds living in the city, and he reached for his P90.
“Sheppard! Did you see that?”
“See what?” Sheppard looked over his shoulder, frowning.
“I saw nothing, O’Neill,” Teal’c reported, and Jack settled himself against the cold stone, still frowning at the sky. He had seen something, he was sure of it, but it had been too fast and too high to get any sense of what it might be. Except that if it was real, it was probably Wraith, and he hauled himself to his feet.
“It could have been one of those pointy-nosed fighters — what-do-you-call-them? Darts.”
“You can generally hear those coming,” Sheppard said, but he bit his lip nervously.
“Not if it was high enough,” Jack said.
“They don’t usually do that,” Sheppard said. “They do their scouting from orbit.”
“There,” Teal’c said, and pointed. Jack caught the tail of the movement, less even than before.
“I still don’t see it,” Sheppard said.
“If the Wraith are scouting from altitude, then presumably they are planning another attack,” Teal’c said.
“Or they’re trying to get a better read on numbers and locations,” Jack said, “since things didn’t exactly go so well for them last time.”
Sheppard was chewing on his lip again. “If there are Wraith around, I need to warn the Athosians — Teyla can sense them, usually, but these guys are a long way up — and maybe Sumner, damn it. If he’ll listen.”
“He’ll listen to me,” Jack said, with more confidence than he felt. “Go on, signal your people.”
Sheppard slipped out of the ruin, crouching low, and Jack looked at Teal’c. “What do you think? Attack or scouting?”
“I would scout from orbit, O’Neill, as Major Sheppard said. I think an attack is coming.”
“Waiting for dark?”
“Perhaps.”
“Where the hell is Zelenka?” Jack burst out. “I need to know what’s happened to Carter and Daniel — we can’t do a damn thing until we know where they are.”
“Indeed —” Teal’c broke off as Sheppard ducked back into their shelter.
“Message received across the water. Now the question is, how do we warn Colonel Sumner?”
“How ‘bout the radio?” Jack said.
“I don’t want him tracking me down,” Sheppard answered. “And I don’t want to give up this hide.” He shook his head. “But, yeah, we have to let him know.”
“Surely he has already seen the scouts, as we have done,” Teal’c said.
It was tempting, Jack thought, but he couldn’t be sure enough. Crazy or not, Sumner was one of theirs, and he had too many people under him to let it slide. “We call up once on the genera
l frequency, tell him that there are Wraith sniffing around — that has the advantage of warning the rest of your people, too, Sheppard — and then we switch the thing off and leave it alone. They can’t track us that quickly.”
“Yeah, that should work.” Sheppard still didn’t sound happy, but he reached for the radio and adjusted the frequency. “Ok, that’s the main band.”
“Thanks.” Jack picked up the microphone, considering his message, then keyed the transmitter. “Sumner, this is O’Neill. You’re being scouted by Wraith from high altitude. Take precautions.”
He released the button, and Sheppard switched off the radio entirely.
“Now we can be sure they can’t track us.”
You hope, Jack thought, but he knew how the system worked. “What about trying to find Zelenka?”
“He could be anywhere,” Sheppard began, and grabbed for his P90 as something made a noise in the tunnel entrance.
“But I am here,” a tired voice said, and a little rumpled man in expedition uniform pulled himself out of the space. He was followed by a much taller man with long dreadlocks pulled back in a sort of ponytail — not an expedition member, he wasn’t in uniform, but his clothes didn’t look Athosian — and then by Carter, looking worn and grim.
“Carter!” Jack stopped. “Daniel?”
“The Wraith took him, sir,” Carter answered. “One of their fighters scooped him up last night.”
Jack swore under his breath. “Where have they taken him?”
Carter shook her head, and Sheppard said, “Probably to the hive.” He saw Carter’s questioning look, and said, “There’s a hive ship in orbit since sometime last night. It looks like they’re planning to wipe out the settlement.”
“But if Daniel’s on the ship,” Carter began. “Sir, if we can get there ourselves, there’s a chance we can get him out.”
“Are you out of your minds?” That was the big man, shaking his head so that the tail of dreadlocks swung heavily across his shoulders.
“This is Specialist Ronon Dex,” Zelenka said. “He’s from Sateda. He came through the Stargate with a message for Halling, and Colonel Sumner locked him up as a spy. When I went to release him, I found Colonel Carter and Dr. Jackson as well. We were on our way back here when the Wraith attacked.”
Sheppard nodded.
Jack said, “Ok, somebody must have tried to rescue people from a hive ship before.”
“It’s in orbit,” Dex said.
“They — we — don’t have anything that will get us to it,” Sheppard said.
Zelenka added, “The Wraith kill off any people who develop technology more advanced than, say, what we had on Earth in the early twentieth century. Like — what were their names, the people you were telling me about, Ronon?”
“The Genii.” The Satedan looked grim. “They hid what they were doing in underground caves, pretended to be just another agricultural people, but the Wraith found out. Six hives came to their homeworld, razed the villages to the ground, burned out the tunnels, and killed everyone they didn’t keep to feed on. They even left the land in ruins.” He looked up as though he could see the Wraith ship through the thin haze. “They’re probably still feeding on Genii up there.”
Jack tried to ignore the chill that ran down his spine. He said, “What if we were able to steal one of those Dart things?”
Teal’c tipped his head to one side. “Indeed.”
“As long as it’s not keyed to specific Wraith DNA, like the ATA gene,” Carter said, “and if we could figure out the controls.”
“We’d have to shoot one down,” Jack said. “That means repairing damage.”
Carter shrugged. “I can try, sir.”
“You really think you can just sit down in a Dart and fly it?” Dex asked.
“We’ve done harder,” Jack said.
Teal’c lifted an eyebrow. “I am not entirely sure of that, O’Neill.”
“Sure we have.” Jack matched him stare for stare.
“Someone is signaling,” Zelenka said, from the doorway, and ducked past Sheppard, who frowned nervously.
“I told your friends, I was on a hive ship once,” Dex said. “It was huge, as big as a city. You’d never find your friend.”
“We have to try,” Carter said.
Zelenka slipped in again, spoke quietly to Sheppard. Jack caught only “Athosians” and “moving up” but Sheppard nodded, looking relieved.
“Teyla says she can sense the Wraith, and they are gathering. She’s sending her people across the lake now, and we’ll try to get as many of our people away as we can.”
“What about Sumner?” Carter asked.
Sheppard gave a little shrug. “Let’s hope he’s being paranoid in the opposite direction.”
Jack paced the length of the underground room and back again, unable to sit still. As the shadows lengthened, Sheppard had led them back into the city, joining forces with Teyla and the rest of the Athosians, who had laid out an escape route that would take people back to the lake and across to the shelter of the forest. The lake crossing would be the most dangerous part, and Teyla was concentrating her people there, along with the two other airmen who’d joined the Athosians. A couple of P90s would be a help, Jack thought, but if the Wraith spotted them, it wasn’t going to be enough. They will concentrate on Sumner and his men as the true threat, Teyla had said, her voice serene, but Jack couldn’t say he was all that happy with that idea, either.
“Hey, Carter.”
“Sir?”
“If I get you one of those Darts, slightly used — you think you can make it fly again?”
“Absolutely, sir.” She tightened the strap of her P90, and nodded at something Zelenka was saying. “Excuse me, sir, I’m heading out —”
“Go ahead, Carter,” Jack said.
Carter would never say anything else, but it was still good to hear it, as though saying it would make it true. Shoot down a Dart, repair it, fly it back to the hive… Maybe he didn’t want to think too closely about it after all. Maybe he could bring down a Dart without messing it up too badly, skip the repairs.
“Dex.”
“Yeah?” The Satedan was fiddling with his wrist bracer, and didn’t look up.
“Don’t the Wraith have some way of getting down to the planet quickly? Some variation on the Stargate or the transport beams, something like that?”
“No.” Dex did look up at that. “Sometimes they bring regiments of drones in the buffer they use for storing the people they Cull, but — no, there’s nothing like that.”
“Crap.” So much for Plan B.
“We’ve had word from Jinto,” Sheppard said quietly, coming up beside him. “The first group of civilians is on its way out.”
“That was quick.”
Sheppard shrugged. “We’ve had a contingency plan in place for a while. McKay and Zelenka designated people to pass the word quickly and quietly and – it works.”
“Good.” Jack made himself focus on the business at hand. It was getting dark outside, the sun dropping below the tops of the distant trees. Sumner would be tightening up his perimeter, readying himself for the night. “How many people?”
“About thirty all told. They’re the ones Sumner’s least likely to miss.”
“Good,” Jack said again. The hard part would be getting the Air Force personnel out, and the support staff in particular, the ones who were handling logistics for the expedition, but they’d cross that bridge when they got there.
Something sounded in the distance, a faint high whine that swelled in an instant to the scream of a Dart. Of more than one Dart, Jack thought, squinting into the sky, and sure enough he could make out four, no, five of them, streaking from the Stargate toward the expedition’s camp.
“Crap,” Sheppard said, and grabbed for the radio. “Colonel Sumner! You’re under attack!” He shifted frequencies. “Teyla, Zelenka, McKay, go to Plan X. I repeat, Plan X.”
He didn’t wait for answers, but grabbed his P90.<
br />
“Plan X?” Jack asked.
“Get as many people out of the city as we can.”
Sam heard the shriek of the Darts as she helped an older woman scientist down the steep slope into one of Zelenka’s tunnels, saw the sudden fear in her eyes as she looked over her shoulder before starting after the rest of her group. The Darts were answered by the discordant clanging of bells, and she risked a look back toward the center of the camp. The Marines were taking up their positions along the well-planned perimeter, the chain of mutually supporting fire points; some of the civilians were running for the shelter of the mess hall — the only shelter left to them, she guessed — but there seemed to be fewer than she remembered, and she hoped that meant that the rest had escaped to the tunnels below.
The air shimmered and a dozen drones materialized in the broken streets. Sumner’s men fired at once, sending the first wave staggering backward, but another dozen appeared, and then another, breaking up the carefully planned defenses. Toward the lake, another party landed, and this one, she thought, had fewer drones and more of the dark-coated warriors.
“Colonel!” Zelenka waved to her from the bottom of the slope.
“That’s everyone,” she called back, and he nodded sharply. He said something to someone he couldn’t see, probably one of the other scientists, and then scrambled up to join her.
“Can you see any sign of McKay?”
Sam shook her head. “Was he coming?”
“He is supposed to be in the next party.” Zelenka ducked as a pair of Darts swept overhead, energy weapons blasting the ruins. “Oh, that is not good.”
“Will the tunnels hold?” Sam asked.
Zelenka shrugged. “Let us hope so.” He broke off abruptly, swearing in Czech. “There.”
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