“Through the Stargate!”
“Impossible!” That was the slender Wraith, speaking aloud to be sure he was understood.
“It is the only conclusion that makes sense,” Seeker said. “Even if on the face of it, it is impossible.”
Daniel pressed his palms to his aching temples. The Queen circled him, her mind brushing his, almost a caress, like fingers brushing his cheek.
“Through the Stargate and from another galaxy.”
“We were sent on what might well be a one-way mission,” Daniel said, his voice tight. More half-truths and lies, he thought, and hoped he could make her believe. “To explore, to see what was here. It is just possible for us to return home — we have one chance to do so. All we want is to return and close the Stargate behind us forever.”
The Queen looked at Seeker, who shrugged. The one with the starred face said, “I don’t believe him.”
“It is not for you to say,” the Queen snapped. She stooped, feeding hand flashing out to catch Daniel by the chin. “And they will trade for you.”
Her claws were pressed too tightly against his jaw for him to nod. Daniel said, “Yes.”
“Bah.” She released him abruptly, thumb claw drawing blood. “You had better hope so.”
“They will,” Daniel said, and hoped Jack really did have someone to trade.
McKay arrived with the naquadah generator just as Sam finished identifying the main power cables. She pushed herself out from under the Dart’s fuselage, dragging the laptop with her, and sat up. “Good —”
“I don’t see why you want to get a Wraith out of there,” McKay said. “And, by the way, how do you know it’s only one Wraith? What makes you think there aren’t a dozen drones and warriors in there just waiting to feed on us as soon as you press the button?”
Sam looked at him for a long moment. “I’ve gotten the system monitor up and running. There’s only one life-sign in the system.”
“Then how do you know it’s their queen?”
“I don’t,” Sam said.
“But we all hope it is, right, Dr. McKay?” Jack strolled over, both hands resting on his P90. “How’s it coming, Colonel?”
“Reasonably well,” Sam answered. “I’ve traced the power lines to the buffer circuits and to the — well, let’s call it the materializer, for want of a better word. I can see how to hook up the power, and the naquadah generator should be ample.”
“So what’s the problem?” Jack gave a crooked smile.
“There’s a very narrow window of acceptable power,” Sam said. “Too little, and the whole process stalls out. Too much, and we blow the system. And it looks to me as though running the materializer is going to set up power fluctuations.”
“Let me see that,” McKay said. Sam handed him the laptop, and he scowled at the screen. “Ok, no, that’s not good.”
“I agree, it’s not optimum,” Sam said. “But it’s the best we’re going to get. And we’re running out of time.”
“The power fluctuation is too great,” McKay said. He looked up, glaring at the Wraith. “What kind of idiot designed this system, anyway? It’s inefficient and it’s likely to blow up in your face.”
The Wraith snarled. Sam said, “Actually, their power generation system seems to be more sensitive than ours. It’s more like a biological feedback loop than the usual power conduit — I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the design wasn’t originally taken from a biological model. I’ve cobbled together a transformer routine that I think will mimic that sensitivity.”
McKay touched the laptop’s trackpad, scowling even more deeply. “That’s not bad, but – let me try something.”
“Be my guest.” Sam watched his fingers fly across the keyboard, new strings of code appearing as he worked. If he could refine her program – well, it would only help.
“Ok,” McKay said at last. “Ok, that might just work. And it won’t blow up the generator if it goes wrong.”
“Just in case,” Sheppard said, “why don’t you run some extra-long cords? We can lose the Dart if we have to, but not one of the generators.”
“We can do that,” Sam said. She climbed back to the cockpit, checking the monitors again. All the lights were steady amber, and she shook her head. “But we need to do it soon.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Sheppard said, and Jack nodded.
“Do what you have to do, Carter.”
She had already traced the cables she could repurpose and borrowed a set of heavy shears from one of the botanists. With Teal’c’s help, she worked her way into the Dart’s underbelly, found the end that seemed to be plugged into a box she had identified as a sensor unit, and wrestled it free. It came away with a soft pop and a gush of odorless fluid, and she cursed as she wiped it off her face and neck.
“You ok in there, Carter?” Jack called.
“Yeah.” The liquid was thick and slimy — alkaline — but it didn’t seem to be doing any actual damage. She wiped her face again, and wriggled back down the compartment, dragging the cable free behind her. She pulled out as much as she could get — not quite three meters, which wasn’t as much as she’d hoped for, but ought to be enough — and reached for the shears. She was ready for the spurt of liquid this time, and managed to avoid getting it on herself, so that she slid out from under the Dart with a smile of triumph.
“Oh, that is disgusting,” McKay exclaimed. “It’s dripping!”
Sam examined the cut end of the cable. “Apparently there’s a thick alkaline — well, call it a liquid or a gel, it’s right between the two — that surrounds the cable core. See if you can splice it onto one of our cables.”
“That’s like asking me to splice a… a banana into a mainframe,” McKay protested. “This isn’t a cable, it’s a vine.”
“If you can’t do it, I will,” Sam said.
“No! No, no, no, no, I can do it, it’s just hardly a physics problem.” McKay glared at the offending cable. “These things are more like, I don’t know what, some kind of alien monstrosity than an actual device…”
Sam tuned him out, and climbed back up to the cockpit. A new light was blinking on the display, and she looked over her shoulder. “Will! What does this mean?”
Sheppard prodded the Wraith forward. He stretched to see into the cockpit, then recoiled, hissing.
“Well?” Sam put her hands on her hips.
“You are on emergency reserve power,” the Wraith said. “There is less than an hour left.”
“Crap.” Sam slid back off the Dart’s wing, ducked around to where McKay was working. “McKay!”
“I heard,” McKay answered. “And I really don’t think —”
“Just do it,” Sam said. “Please.”
She turned away without waiting for an answer and began prying off the cover of the materializer. Yes, that was the power input, and it looked as though it was attached with a plug, not hardwired in place. She’d take that, she thought, and began teasing apart the tangle of wires that surrounded a blackened cylinder the size of her little finger. She’d scavenged an apparently identical cylinder from the control servos; the question now was whether she could get it into place before the power ran out.
It took her three tries, but at last she had it in place and seated correctly. “McKay! How’s it going with that connection?”
“Well, it’s attached.” His voice was less peevish than before, and Sam hoped that was a good sign. “And I’ve got the transformer program running and it looks like it will do the job.”
“Right.” Sam pulled herself out of the Dart. “Let’s run a quick test before we go any further.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” McKay demanded. “The only thing that cable connects to is the Dart.”
“Got a voltmeter?”
“Of course. Though what good that’s going to do —”
“It’ll tell us if the current is flowing.” Sam held out her hand. “Give.”
McKay handed it over without further
protest, and Sam walked back to the end of the cable. Attaching the voltmeter was an obvious problem, but she settled for clipping its leads to the edges of the connectors and then took a step back.
“Ok, turn it on!”
McKay waved his hand, and turned to do something with the laptop. There was a blinding flash, blue fire searing Sam’s vision, and the voltmeter exploded. The air stank of ozone.
“Turn it off!”
“It’s off.” McKay came to join her as she bent over the smoking voltmeter. “You know, we don’t have a lot of those to spare.”
“Sorry.” Sam toed it cautiously. “I didn’t think it would do that. But we do have power.”
“Colonel Carter!” Sheppard called from the other side of the Dart. “Will here is getting kind of antsy.”
“What’s the problem?” Sam ducked around the back of the Dart.
“There is no more time,” the Wraith said. His face was twisted, his teeth bared. “The reserve is failing.”
“Crap,” Carter said again. “McKay! We’re going to have to go for it!”
“No! We’re not ready —”
“Get ready!” Carter reached for the cable’s end, flicked away the clip from the voltmeter. It showed no signs of scorching, or any other damage, and she fitted it into the input socket. It jammed, and she pulled it back out, swearing. Ok, the configuration was right, three points on the top and two below, but — the bottom two were a hair too close together. She grabbed the multi-tool from her pocket and flipped it to a pair of pliers, pried at the offending tines. One gave, just a little, and she slammed it back into place. This time it went at least partway home, and she waved to McKay. “Start it up!”
“This is very bad idea,” he yelled back, but his hands moved on the generator’s controls. “Ok, power’s on. Transformer’s working —”
The smell of ozone rose again, and Sam could see a faint blue haze between the plug and the socket.
“Looks like the power’s flowing,” McKay called. “All within limits.”
Sam scrambled back to the cockpit, dragging herself up onto the wing. The telltales were all brighter gold, and steady rather than flashing, and she looked over her shoulder. “Sheppard! Teal’c! I’m firing the materializer now.”
She pulled the lever before she could change her mind, and a blue beam shot from the belly of the Dart. McKay yelped, his hands busy on the laptop, and there was a small explosion from the rear of the Dart, the cable flapping free. And on the ground, a huddled white-haired shape rolled to its feet, empty hands spread wide.
“Shut it down!” Sam yelled, to McKay, and saw him move to obey.
On the ground, Jack cocked his P90, Teal’c ready at his side. “Don’t move,” he said. “Or I will blow your head off.”
The Wraith froze, her face still contorted in a furious snarl. “How dare you?”
“Let’s make it simple,” Jack said. “Your queen has one of my people. I want him back. I’m willing to trade you for him.”
Sam slid out of the cockpit, grabbing up her own weapon as she came around the Dart’s half-buried nose. This was the first female Wraith she’d seen: smaller than the males, and definitely mammalian, dressed like them in black leather coat and high boots, though her coat was shorter and cut to make the most of a slight figure. It had a high collar, framing her pointed chin, and there was a diamond-shaped cutout below the collar, revealing cleavage and the dark spiral of a tattoo across her chest. She was young, Sam thought, a lot younger than she would have expected, and beneath the bravado, Sam thought she was afraid.
The Wraith glared at her. “Tell your blades to let me go,”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “You heard the General.”
The young queen tossed her head, her unbound hair flying. “We will feed on you all —”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said. “But I’d really like to talk to your queen first.”
Sam looked over her shoulder. “Will. You want to show us how to contact her?”
The male Wraith bobbed his head. “I will show you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Exchange
CARTER worked the Dart controls with somewhat alarming ease — well, maybe ’alarming’ wasn’t exactly the right word, Jack thought. After all, her ability to pick up the workings of alien machinery had saved their necks more than once already. But that had been Goa’uld technology, or weird Ancient devices, not the disturbingly organic muddle that seemed to be the basis of Wraith science. The really alarming thing was seeing the male Wraith that close to her, even with his feeding hand tied up in that leather sheath that the Athosians swore would keep him from using it. Or maybe it was the female Wraith, pacing back and forth under the watchful eyes and guns of Teal’c and Sheppard. She was clearly furious, and clearly in search of any possible advantage, and the best thing they could do was get her back to her queen before she decided to try something stupid. It was a shame they hadn’t been able to keep her in the Dart’s buffer, but you couldn’t worry about technical glitches.
“Hey, Carter! How’s it going?”
“Almost there, sir.” Her voice was muffled. “I have to re-route a couple of the cables to get power to the communications device, and then it looks like one of the cables I pulled I actually need to make the transmitter work.” Carter’s head appeared over the edge of the cockpit, followed by the rest of her. “But that’s an easy fix.” She disappeared around the Dart’s stern.
“Whatever you say,” Jack muttered. As soon as they got Daniel back — and the male, at least, was convinced that the Wraith queen would be willing to trade — they could go back to trying to figure out what had gone wrong with Janus’s ouroboros device, and maybe, just maybe, figure out how to get back to their own timeline. Of course, that meant leaving Sheppard in charge, and in the soup, dealing with the Wraith and the Athosians. Which was not his problem, Jack told himself, but he wasn’t finding himself very convincing.
Carter reappeared, dirt smeared on her forehead, but she was smiling. “The power’s all hooked up now, sir, and Will already gave me the frequency. Are you ready to talk to the Wraith queen?”
“Absolutely,” Jack said, and climbed onto the wing behind her.
Carter slid into the cockpit, settling herself into the oddly-shaped couch with more ease than he would have expected, then pressed a series of buttons beneath the central screen. It lit, displaying a cascade of golden letters, and Carter looked up at him.
“All set, sir.” She hauled herself up onto the edge of the cockpit as he slid down into the couch, squinting at the screen.
“Ok. What does this say, Carter?”
He could hear the shrug in her voice. “I don’t really know, sir. I think they’re standby messages, and maybe tuning info? But if you press that button all the way to the left, the Dart should call the hiveship.”
Jack hesitated for an instant. Pressing buttons because a prisoner told you to was usually a good way to get yourself blown up. But then, Carter would have taken that into account as a matter of course. He reached out and pressed the button.
The letters vanished from the screen, to be replaced by darkness spiked with static. No, there was something moving in the darkness, a shape that resolved itself to another male Wraith, this one with his hair done in dreadlocks. He snarled at the screen and Jack gave him an equally toothy smile in return.
“Hi, there. I want to talk to your queen.”
“Human.” The Wraith made the word an epithet. “We will destroy you —”
“Whoa, hold on,” Jack said. “Let’s do a little less destroying here. I’ve got something — someone — your queen wants, and she’s got one of my people. I think we need to talk.”
A second Wraith appeared, this one bald, his scalp covered with tattoos, and the first Wraith backed away, bowing.
“You wish to speak to the Queen?” the second Wraith said.
“That’s right. I have someone she’s looking for.”
There w
as a long silence, and then the Wraith said, “Wait.”
The image in the screen froze, and Jack looked at Carter. “Ok, now what? As long as they’re not using this to get a fix on us so they can drop a bomb or something.”
Carter glanced up at the sky as though that would tell her something, but she answered seriously enough. “I don’t think so. The — Will called her the Young Queen, and I’m getting the impression she might even be the big queen’s daughter. She’s too important for them to risk.”
“You think.”
“I wish Daniel were here, too. But — I think she’s really young, sir. And if she’s the queen’s daughter —”
The screen crackled before she could finish, and Jack straightened as a new image swam into focus. It was another Wraith female, scarlet-haired this time, who glared at him from the oval screen.
“Who are you, human, who dares threaten me?”
“My name is Jack O’Neill, General O’Neill, and I wanted to talk to you because I think I have something you want. Or someone — a couple of someones, maybe.”
“Prove it to me,” the Wraith queen said.
Jack hesitated — he really didn’t like the idea of being in the same cockpit as the younger queen, and he didn’t like the idea of letting her in it by herself any better — and Carter said, “Here.”
She tossed him an egg-shaped object about the size of Teal’c’s fist. “Point it at the screen and press the big button on the narrow end. It’s like a camcorder, McKay took pictures of Will and the young queen.”
“Ok.” Jack fumbled with it for a moment, then found the button. “Here you go,” he said, and pressed it. The images spilled down the screen, moving like the letters from top to bottom: the young queen snarling at the camera, Will looking miserable. The pictures faded, and the queen snarled at him from the screen.
“So you have her and her worthless blade. Harm her, and I will shred the life from your man whom I hold here.”
“About that,” Jack said. “I want to see Daniel.”
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