by Jo Graham
“So now we come to it,” Nechayev said, picking up a calabash shrimp and popping it in his mouth. “Will I support your candidate to replace him? Your Colonel Sheppard, I assume?” He chewed thoughtfully. “He seems like a good man, and I’ve no doubt he’s a good soldier, or they would not have held so long. But he’s military. They will not do it, not most of the other IOA members. They did not like Carter, and they slapped down the idea of Caldwell as though it burned them. They won’t buy Sheppard, no matter how you paint him.” Nechayev looked at him keenly. “They only swallowed Carter because they were terrified of the Replicators.”
“And fired her as soon as she cleaned them up.” Jack didn’t look up from his plate.
“Yes, well.” Nechayev shrugged. “That is the way it goes.” He took a long drink of his beer. “An entire sentient race wiped out.”
“They’re machines,” Jack said. He looked at Nechayev across the table. “Sophisticated machines. No different than blowing up a tank or taking out a satellite.”
“Not people. Not possessing an immortal soul.” Nechayev shrugged. “I am not arguing that they were. That is the thing about machines. You cannot appeal to their better natures. Failsafe devices and dead men switches.” His eyes met Jack’s. “We have seen those in our nightmares, yes? The machines that cannot be dissuaded from their programming, locked in a firing routine long after all those they protect are dead.” He took another long drink of his beer. “We are old cold warriors, you and I. There is no reasoning with the machine. It is as well that Carter destroyed them utterly.”
Jack didn’t reply, only turned the beer bottle around in his hands, reading the label.
“I only mention it to point out that I doubt she would have been so quick to annihilate them completely with no quarter asked or given if it had not been for her own experiences with the Replicators in the past. Taken prisoner and tortured terribly, was it not?” Nechayev shrugged again. “But then we are all what life has made us. We all have those we cannot forgive.”
“True enough,” Jack said, still turning the beer bottle around. He put it down and raised his eyes. “I know the IOA won’t have Sheppard or Caldwell. I had a civilian candidate in mind. Dr. Daniel Jackson.”
Nechayev whistled. “That is a game changer,” he said quietly.
“I thought you’d think so,” Jack said, spearing a clam strip. “How about it?”
“No one can say he’s not qualified,” Nechayev said. “He’s eminently qualified. One of the foremost experts on the Ancients in the world, active at the highest levels of negotiations for a decade. A close friend of yours, of course, but that is to be expected. You would hardly recommend someone you didn’t trust.”
Jack smiled pleasantly. “No. I wouldn’t.”
“Shen won’t buy it.”
“Of course,” Jack said. “She wants it herself.”
“When pigs fly, as you say,” Nechayev replied.
“We’re paying the bills. It’s an American.” Jack speared another clam strip and twirled it in the ketchup. “You know the saying, you’ve got to dance with the one that brung you?”
“I do know it,” he said. “And I will tell you something that you already know as well. Our interests are far more in the Milky Way than Pegasus. Not nearly so far, and much more friendly. There are many opportunities among the Jaffa alliances and others that do not involve going nearly so far, or encountering quite so many life sucking aliens. We want our hand in, if there is a hand in Pegasus, but frankly if the IOA closed down the expedition tomorrow we would not weep.” Nechayev took a long drink of his beer. “You are overcommitted, O’Neill. You know it. You are overextended on Earth and…” He cocked his head to the ceiling. “Now you are looking down the barrel of a sour economy and an isolationist population dreaming of a solution that will make everyone else’s problems not their problems. You hate the IOA, but we are your best chance at not having to fold your hand completely. Perhaps if you can shoehorn some of it off onto us or those hungry boys who are pretending they are building weather satellites for Ariane just outside Warsaw, you will not have to turn over the City of the Ancients to the Chinese.”
“The Austerlitz is eighteen months from completion,” Jack said quietly. “And it’s only the communications systems that are being assembled in Poland. The hull is being built in Clermont Ferrand.”
“And then the EU will have their own warship, and we are three years from replacing the Korolev,” Nechayev said. “And you’ve suspended work on your new vessel indefinitely.”
“Money,” Jack said.
“There is no such thing as a cheap war.” Nechayev shrugged. “Very well. I will back Jackson. But you…”
“I know,” Jack said. “I’ll owe you through the nose.”
“I was going to suggest a less polite part of your anatomy,” Nechayev laughed. “But I will take your nose if it is what is offered.”
Chapter Nine
Sheppard and Guide
“We have much to discuss,” Guide said. “If you do intend to make an alliance in truth.” He looked from Teyla to Sheppard. “There are other things besides the location of Dr. McKay that may prove of interest to you.”
“And I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff you’d like to know,” Sheppard said pleasantly. “We’ll see.”
Guide snorted. “I understand if you must consult with your Colonel Carter first. After all, you are her consort, and doubtless she will want to hear of your safety first and foremost.”
Sheppard frowned. “What?”
“Do you not think she will have a care for your safety?” Guide baited. He had seen such before, a blade trying to play old queen and young queen both, a dangerous game, and one that usually lost a man his life. “Are you not her lover?”
“Carter’s?” Sheppard’s eyebrows rose, and the bewilderment in his voice was genuine. “You think me and Carter? No. Not at all. She’s been with somebody else for a long time. We get along really well, but not that way at all.”
Teyla looked amused. “Though I am sure she will be glad to hear he is safe and well.”
Guide nodded inwardly. Better. That was safer, if Sheppard was not playing some dangerous game of his own. Better if he were Consort to She Who Carries Many Things in name only, a reliable man that a queen might choose to represent her in the absence of her own consort of many years, some older blade who doubtless protected their interests elsewhere. Such a man might be valuable to a queen. “I must have misunderstood,” Guide said smoothly. “Your pardon,” he asked of Teyla.
“Of course,” she said, and Sheppard tipped his head to her, as if wondering what that exchange were about.
“If we have much to discuss,” Guide said. “Will you come aboard my ship?”
They exchanged a look, but this time it was Teyla who spoke. “No. But we will give you coordinates where you may meet us, and there we will talk.”
“And if it is a trap?”
“How should it be?” she asked. “I did not know you would come here, so how could I have arranged with any other to ambush you? And if I did give you the coordinates for a rendezvous with the Hammond, the hive ship and the Hammond would be well matched, and you would come out of hyperspace with your shields raised.”
Which was of course true. Guide sighed. “Very well,” he said tersely. “Give me your coordinates. I will have my shuttle return me to my ship, and we will follow you to this location. I hope you appreciate that doing so is an unprecedented act of trust.”
“Not so much,” Sheppard said. “We’ll be talking under your guns.” He still looked doubtful.
“I will speak with my ship first,” Guide said, and stepped away, lifting his communicator to his mouth. He did not speak into it, only turned his back and listened, wanting to hear whatever passed between them. It would tell him a great deal, what was said and not said. If this were an ambush, there would be no need to say anything.
“We must do this, John,” she said quietly, her tones too l
ow for another human to hear at this distance.
“You really think this is the best shot of getting to Rodney?”
“I do not think we will ever have a better. And what do we lose by talking? Let us take the opportunity we have. It may not come again.”
There was a long pause. “Ok.” Guide did not turn, but he heard Sheppard’s voice change. “I didn’t expect you to come.”
“Did you think that I would ever leave you?”
Guide closed his eyes.
*Did you think that I would ever leave you?* She had said it softly, mind to mind, her fingers where the pulse jumped in his wrist, half turning her head to look at him sideways, red hair rendered dawn colored in the shiplight.
*You should have*, he had said, and the smoke wreathed them, smoke and the scent of burned shipflesh. *It would have been wiser.*
Snow said nothing, but in her eyes he saw her demurral. *Never.*
Guide spun around. “I will meet you,” he said sharply. “But know that if this is a trap I will never treat with you again under any circumstances.”
“It is not a trap,” Teyla Emmagan said.
He turned and strode off to the airlock where his shuttle waited. At the door he turned and glanced back to see them standing apart, silhouetted against the light behind them, her dark skirts and tight laced boots, Sheppard’s tall, lanky shape as he bent his forehead to hers.
Hyperspace cradled the cruiser Eternal, blue streaks shifting in endless patterns past its windowless hull. John finished every last morsel of the cheese and crackers from his MRE and opened the brownie. “You know, I’d forgotten these were good,” he said.
Teyla looked amused. Or at least he thought she did. The curves of her face were different. “You sound like Rodney,” she said.
“I’ve been eating nothing but fruit for days. Cold beef ravioli started looking pretty good.” John looked up at her. “You’re not eating.”
“I cannot,” she said and shrugged. “Just the protein shakes and energy drinks. There is too much plastic surgery in my mouth for me to eat anything solid.” Teyla reached for the thermos beside her. “Jennifer has tried to make it palatable. But it is terrible all the same. I will be fine for a few days,” she assured him. “It is just that I think the beef ravioli has begun to look good too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She took a drink and grimaced. “We will hear what Todd has to say. I think it is important, from the shade of his mind.”
“That’s kind of creepy.” John looked down at his brownie. “You reading his mind.”
“John?” Her voice was low, and he glanced up, meeting narrowed yellow reptilian eyes. “You know that I cannot really touch your mind. Not yours, nor any other human’s. It does not work that way.”
“I know,” he said, seeing the way she turned her hand over on her skirts, hiding the feeding slit in the folds of cloth. “Hell of an act.”
“You made it work,” she said. “I could only hope that you would have presence of mind to play along. I did not realize you would do so quite so thoroughly.” There was a mischievous note in her voice.
“Yeah.” John carefully flattened out the brownie wrapper, like it was important. “That was…disturbing.”
“Yes,” she said, and he didn’t think he imagined the tremor in her voice. As disturbed as he was, she must be ten times more so. He didn’t look away from her yellow eyes, from the night dark fall of hair, pale greenish skin against the dark lines of bodice and coat, from the way she twisted her hand in her skirt as though to hide it.
He reached down and took it, turning it very deliberately palm uppermost. It was a good job from Keller, he thought. Her small fingers were elongated, rendered more so in illusion by the long dark green claws shining with emerald lacquer, the lips of the feeding slit open and slightly moist, a little purpled at the edges. Very deliberately he bent over her hand, kissed the base of her palm and watched her shiver.
“John,” she said, and her eyes were shadowed. Strange, yes, but the expression in them wasn’t.
He was no good with words, never had been. “Teyla,” he said. “It’s you.”
“It is all me,” she said sadly. “This is not entirely an act. This is part of me. It is part of who I am.”
“I know.”
She lifted her head to the ceiling, blinking, her hair falling back. “I wish I could say that I am pretending. That I am very clever. But it is not all pretense. I am this person. She is part of me. And I do not know if I can live with that.”
“I can,” he said, closing her hand in his, small and strong in his fingers.
“I am kin to the Wraith. There is nothing that can be said of someone worse than they are like the Wraith. Than that they are Wraith.” She blinked again as though she did not want to cry. “And yet this is me. This will always be part of me. I am not pretending, John. I am being something I have always been.”
“You’re a lot of things,” he said, and shifted closer to get his other arm behind her back. “You’ve always been a lot of things. You’re a good trader and you make impossible deals. Remember when you told me that? You’re a good fighter, a reliable soldier. You’re always good backup. You’re a diplomat, and God help us we need one. You’re a mom. You’re a friend. You’re smart and you’re tough and maybe the bravest person I’ve ever seen.” He shrugged and gathered her in against his shoulder, his face against the top of her head. “This is just one more thing you are. Really scary.”
She gave a strangled little laugh, her hair falling forward so he couldn’t see if she was crying or not.
“Hey, you know. Steelflower is kind of hot. In a wrong kind of way,” he said to the top of her head.
At that she did laugh, though he thought there were tears in it. “John. You are crazy.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’m good with that.” It sounded starker than he’d expected, truer.
Teyla lifted her face, her eyes searching his.
“I told you that a long time ago. Seriously got a screw loose. That’s me. Nancy…” He took a deep breath. “I blew that up pretty badly.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she said. “And I can live with that.” She dropped her head, the side of her face against his shoulder. “I have seen you crazy, when you did not know where you were or who I was. And I did not fear you then.”
“Teyla.” He shut his eyes against the memory of that day on the planet with the Wraith experiment gone awry. “I shot Rodney. It was just luck that I didn’t kill him.”
“You did not shoot me. You thought that I was Holland.”
“And there’s another kettle of fish,” John said, his eyes squeezed tight. “Nancy…”
“I am not Nancy,” she said, and the urgent sound in her voice made him open his eyes. The corners of her mouth twitched over fanged teeth, an ironic and monstrous smile. “Nancy was not Wraith.”
“No,” he said. “She sure wasn’t.” He swallowed. So many words, and so hard to say. His words had died that cold spring in Washington, frozen before summer came into Antarctic ice. “She wasn’t anything like you.” So many words, poured out on a marriage counselor’s silence, words to condemn him, words to cut him to the bone, and no words he could make in return, nothing that would thaw him, frozen in desert night, scoured by raw winds. Antarctica had almost felt good. The icy winds were real.
Golden eyes and a monster’s face, her hand in his and her head against his shoulder, her heart beating against his arm, beautiful and deadly, strange and familiar at once.
“We’ll just watch out for each other and muddle along. Right?” he said, and watched her eyes spill over at last.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled through her tears. “We will just muddle along.”
“Todd better not get any ideas,” he said. “I mean, Steelflower is pretty hot.”
“I can handle Todd,” Teyla said, raising her chin. “I am his queen.”
“No.”
She loo
ked up at him swiftly. “No?”
“You’re my queen,” John said.
Jeannie drummed her fingers on the conference room table, waiting for everyone to arrive. Radek wasn’t actually drumming his fingers, but he looked like he wanted to. Ever since they got the detailed readings from the flyby survey of the island, it had been clear that they couldn’t send a team to investigate fast enough to satisfy him.
Colonel Carter was the next to arrive, a smudge of oil on one cheek as if she’d been interrupted working on the Hammond. She was just pulling back a chair to sit down when Ronon came in looking as if he’d just come from the gym. He’d said something yesterday about training sessions with the new Marines, which apparently meant teaching them how to survive when a big Satedan tried to kill them.
William Lynn, the archaeologist, came in a moment later. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did want to take a moment to look over these sensor readings, since this is the first anyone’s told me that they found any.”
Radek cleared his throat. “Yes, well. Now that we are all here,” he said, and stood. He tapped at his laptop, and a map of the southern ocean appeared projected on one wall. “While we were working on the Wraith cruiser, we picked up some anomalous energy readings coming from a large island in the southern hemisphere,” he said, pointing. “Dr. Cain and Dr. Ikeda did a flyby of the island this afternoon, and the results of their scans are very promising.” He tapped a few more keys, and an overlay of power readings at different locations appeared on the map.
Colonel Carter leaned over to see better. “Oh, interesting,” she said. Ronon glanced skeptically at William, who shrugged as if to say that he didn’t see what was interesting yet either.
“We believe these power readings suggest that there is Ancient technology present on this planet, and, what’s more, that some of it may still be functioning.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and changed the display on the screen. Now it was showing geological maps, showing their best guess at how the islands and the ice had shifted over time.