by Jo Graham
“You could just milk us like cows,” John said. The idea was sickening.
“In a word, yes. It is the difference between milking cows and slaughtering cows. If you have a limited number of cattle, the former is more sustainable.”
“I can’t believe we’re going there,” John said.
“Do you suffer any long term effects of being fed upon?” Todd challenged, raising his eyes to John’s. “I fed on you nearly three years ago, but did not drain you to death. I am sure it was unpleasant and painful, but more so than any other wound you have received? Do you feel any effects of it now, even so much as from that Iratus bug wound on your neck?”
John lifted his hand, rubbing at the raised circle of thick tissue on his neck involuntarily. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t feel any effects now.”
“That is our goal. If it were no more than that, something unpleasant and painful from which one might recover in a few weeks, and feel no effects from three years later, then we might reach symbiosis,” Todd said.
“Symbiosis?” John snorted. “Symbiosis is when two species benefit from each other. What do we get from you? It would be better for humanity if all the Wraith were dead.”
Todd’s eyes sparked. “And do you have the wherewithal to do that, John Sheppard? I think not.”
“Not yet,” John said.
“Is that what you want then? Genocide? To utterly destroy a sentient species down to the last one? You are indeed the son of the Ancients, John Sheppard.”
Teyla took a quick breath.
Todd looked at Teyla sideways. “Ask yourself if this is what your queen wants. You see her there in the semblance of one of us. She is not entirely a stranger to us, is she?” He met her eyes. “Can you say that you wish all of us dead? That you wish your kindred utterly extinguished?”
John swallowed. “If it would safeguard human lives. People come first.”
Todd’s mouth quirked. “Is that not always the answer? But who are people, Sheppard? That is the problem. And how much tainted blood does it take to make you not a person? As much as hers? As much as her son’s? There are many humans in this galaxy who would kill her in a moment for the blood she bears, who would kill her son without mercy.”
Teyla’s voice shook. “And would you show any such mercy? You have not before, when you fed upon the children of the Athosians.”
“We have killed out of hunger. Not out of fear.”
“Sateda looked like fear to me,” John said.
“I am trying to find a way that we need not kill you,” Todd snapped. “But I see I was foolish to attempt it. You would rather continue your manly posturing about how you will destroy us when it is your people who are on the brink.”
“No,” Teyla said quietly, “It is my people.” She looked from one to the other, her eyes lingering on each of them. “We have been culled to the bone, and Michael nearly finished us. It is my people who will die.”
“And so it is your decision, is it not?” Todd asked her, and there was no mockery in his tone. “You may decide, here and now, the fate of humans and Wraith both in this galaxy. It is upon you in this moment, Teyla Emmagan.”
He saw it cross her face, the knowledge and the power. The responsibility. Whatever she did, trusting Todd or not, everything that came after would be her burden. Whoever lived or died, she would know it was her choice.
Nobody could live with that. Nobody could live that way.
John straightened up. “You’re right,” he said to Todd. “We don’t have the wherewithal to kill you. It’s an academic question. We don’t have the means to do it, and Earth doesn’t have the will. The Pegasus Galaxy isn’t our first or even fifteenth priority. We’re not the Ancients. We’re just people who inherited some of their stuff.” He looked at Teyla. “I think we should hear Todd out.”
“I think so too,” she said. He couldn’t read her expression, not changed as her face was.
Todd nodded slowly. “We have been working on a retrovirus which would allow humans to be fed upon without permanent injury. Unfortunately, we have reached an impasse. Your Dr. Keller’s knowledge would be invaluable, as she was working along parallel lines with her retrovirus. If we are to be allies in truth, that is one thing I put before you. We have a possible means of ending random cullings forever. But I would like your Dr. Keller’s help.”
John took a deep breath. “We want Rodney back.”
“He is not mine to return to you,” Todd said.
“I know,” Teyla said quietly. “But in this guise I think I have a chance of reaching him. And perhaps more importantly I can be a counterweight to Queen Death.”
“You have no concept as yet how strong she has become,” Todd said. “So many hives have flocked to her and her impossible promises. They are weak minded, lured by the scent of gifts she can never provide!”
“People are like that,” John shrugged. “Tell ‘em what they want to hear and they’ll do whatever without thinking too hard about it.”
“People?” Todd’s brow rose.
“Um,” John said.
“Do you think there are none who would work against her, if another queen opposed her?” Teyla asked smoothly, opening her fingers against the smooth cloth of her skirts.
“It is hard to say,” Todd said. “It is a matter of prestige, but it is also more than that. A queen attracts a following by the force of her personality and her allure, her charisma. But she holds it by the force of her mind. I do not know if Queen Death has been challenged by another queen. In the time I have known her she has avoided meeting another queen face to face, preferring to work by proxies or simply kill them at a distance. She is young, and while the force of her charisma is considerable I do not know if she has the strength to defeat one who is not bowed by her allure.”
“And why aren’t you?” Teyla asked in that same smooth, quiet voice.
For a moment Todd hesitated. “I am very old,” he said. “And I have seen many queens come and go.”
John looked at her. “What do you think?” he asked, figuring this was about the highest stakes he could imagine, wishing for a moment that the telepathy did work with him. But it didn’t. It never would.
“It is not our decision to make alone,” Teyla said carefully. “I think that we both see the merit in your plan, but this is a decision that must be weighed by others as well. Dr. Keller must decide whether she will come, and Colonel Carter’s opinion must be considered. We will return to Atlantis and speak with them. But either way we will meet you at a rendezvous you suggest afterwards.”
John took a deep breath. “It could save lives now,” he said. “If fewer people are being killed by the Wraith, that’s a good thing. Maybe the best we can do.”
“And you will live with that, John Sheppard,” Todd said. “Very well.”
Laura shone the light on her P90 around the space beyond the doors, William almost jostling at her elbow. There was a cracked floor that might have been concrete and a broad, empty space, high ceilinged and cold.
“Hey, Robinson,” Ronon said. “Can you think about lights?”
“I can try,” Eva said. On Atlantis she didn’t have to think about lights. They just came on at her approach. Lights, she thought. Lights. Lights. But either that wasn’t how it worked or the lights weren’t working after all these centuries. It stayed stubbornly dark. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s unlikely they would work after so long,” William said, his flashlight beam playing over the floor and the walls beside the doors, pitted and fractured by ice. “This place is not in very good condition. A lot more like most of our Ancient finds than Atlantis.”
“Something still works,” Ronon said in the rear. “The power source. Let’s find it.”
“Straight in, then,” William said, checking his scanner. “And down. Perhaps there are stairs.”
Laura’s light flicked over flaking blue stripes painted on the floor. “This looks like a hanger,” she said.
“Th
ere are many reasons you might mark symbols on the floor,” William began. He stopped short as his light played ahead. “Or it might be a hangar,” he concluded. The beam of his light danced over a familiar stubby shape.
“It’s a puddle jumper,” Eva said.
“A wrecked one,” Ronon added. Even from here it was obvious the jumper was in bad shape. The left drive pod was extended, the casing blackened by fire, corroded machinery dangling from it. The hull was scorched above the drive pod, the outer ablative coating peeling back from the metal beneath. As they walked around it, the windscreen was darkened, rendered opaque by fire or time.
“That’s too bad,” Laura said. “It would be nice to find another one. But I suppose Dr. Zelenka will want to take a look anyhow.”
“He can always use parts,” Ronon said. “We can’t make a bunch of stuff. There might be some parts he can scavenge here. We can bring back a team later to do that.”
“Maybe there are more jumpers in here,” Eva said hopefully.
Unfortunately, it looked like she was wrong. They checked out the entire hangar bay, a space big enough to have held a dozen jumpers, but it was empty.
“Not even any fire suppression equipment,” Ronon said, his eyes examining the corners sharply. “Somebody stripped this place.”
“It appears that they left voluntarily and with sufficient time to remove anything of value,” William said. “Perhaps they simply closed the base down.”
“Maybe so.” Ronon shone his light along the far wall. There were two metal doors. He frowned. “Those are pressure doors, the kind we have in Atlantis in the areas that are underwater.”
“Maybe this place flooded sometimes?” Laura asked.
“I can’t imagine how, from the geological work we did,” William replied. “We’re far above sea level, and it seems likely it would have been even further away 10,000 years ago.”
“Bad weather?” Eva suggested. “It does get really cold here, right?”
“It does,” William conceded. “Perhaps that was the reason.”
“We should see what’s on the other side,” Laura said.
It took three of them to pry the doors open with Eva holding the light so the others could work, Ronon on one side and William and Laura on the other.
“Perfectly ordinary hallway,” William said. He looked at Eva. “Can you try the lights?”
Frowning, she put her hand to the wall. Lights, she thought really hard.
“That’s something,” William said, and she opened her eyes. A few dim emergency lights had flickered to life here and there, providing some illumination.
There still wasn’t anything to see. It looked like an underground version of one of Atlantis’ maintenance corridors, just utilitarian metal and stone. Ordinary doors marked its length for perhaps a hundred feet, where it dead ended in a T intersection.
“Let’s start trying doors,” Laura said.
The air was cool but stale. Ventilation was working somewhere, and Eva said as much.
William nodded, his light playing around the third empty room Laura had opened. “Not uncommon in Ancient facilities. But I must say, this is one of the planer ones I’ve ever examined, even the much older ones in the Milky Way. No ornamentation, no script… The Ancients liked to make functional things beautiful and elegant. Here it seems they just didn’t bother.”
Ronon opened the door across the hall. Six niches filled the other three walls, each roughly seven feet long and four feet wide, stacked one on top of the other. “Barracks,” he said. “This looks like the crew quarters in the undersea drilling station we found on Lantea.”
William nodded, for all that was Greek to Eva, a reference to some mission she’d never heard of. Presumably William had gotten much more classified material to review than she had. “That follows.”
“Only here they took the mattresses and lamps with them,” Ronon said, looking around. “Didn’t leave a thing. They didn’t desert this place in a hurry. They shut it down.”
“I’d be inclined to agree,” William said, backing out into the hall again.
Laura looked out of the door of the room across the hall. “Bathroom,” she said. “No frills, just the basics.”
“Some kind of military base?” Eva wondered aloud.
“It seems likely,” William said. “Just a hypothesis, of course. But this far out in the rim it may have been abandoned early in the war. This is far from all known population centers, and there seems to have been no strategic material here to defend.” He shrugged. “Perhaps simply not worth keeping as the Ancients became overextended.”
“It’s kind of creepy,” Laura said.
“It’s just a ruin,” William said. There was a slightly exasperated tone in his voice. “And not a particularly interesting one at that.”
“It’ll be interesting if it has a ZPM,” Ronon said. “How about we skip all these rooms and go straight for the energy source?”
“Just a quick look,” William promised, though by the tenth room even he was beginning to sound frustrated. “Maybe a kitchen,” he said of a long room stripped of everything except for some heavy stone sinks.
“Kitchens, barracks, bathrooms, storerooms,” Eva said as she opened the next door. “I wonder what it was all for?”
“A military outpost does seem likely,” William began.
Laura looked in. “Or a research facility,” she said. “This is more like it.”
Banks of metal shelves lined the walls, wires dangling where pieces of equipment had been pulled. A central pedestal held a stripped terminal, empty slots clearly showing where viewscreens had once been installed. Along the opposite wall of the room one way glass partitions separated out two isolation chambers, entirely empty except for a few overhead lighting fixtures, though small holes in the walls here and there suggested where other equipment might have gone.
William ran his hands over the remaining terminal almost lovingly. “This still has power,” he said.
“The lights do,” Eva replied. “Want me to initialize it?”
Ronon shook his head. “No. Lynn, you just get video, ok? We have no idea what this stuff does, and I’ve seen McKay nearly blow himself up way too many times turning on Ancient stuff he didn’t know anything about. Get some video, and when we bring Zelenka back here he can have a look at it.”
“It seems to have operative systems,” William said. “I could just…”
“Leave it alone,” Ronon said patiently. “Find the ZPM, if there is one. Zelenka can have a look at this stuff and see what it does.”
“It might be a weapon,” William argued.
“It might be just the environmental controls,” Eva said sensibly. “It looks like they took everything else except the lights and the ventilation systems. It’s probably the terminal that controls them.”
Ronon gave her an approving look. “Right. So let’s find the power source.”
Laura had been looking at the isolation chambers, trying to find the way to open them. Now she stopped, her head going up. “Ronon,” she said, “I don’t think this was a lab.”
He came to see what she was looking at, Eva and William at his shoulder. One of the walls was scratched, long gouges in groups of nine, a tenth hash mark across each group tying them together.
“No,” he said grimly. “It was a prison.”
They went on, down metal stairs that creaked alarmingly from corrosion and stressed joints, past more conventional cells set into the walls, bars drawn back across empty space. There were twenty of them. Eva counted. Twenty, and each had held a single person? Or each had held a dozen prisoners? There was no knowing. Everything was dark and silent, empty and clean, leaving no clues to the original occupants.
“I can smell the ocean,” Eva said suddenly.
It was colder here, and there was a distinct salt tang to the air that didn’t smell like the ventilation systems.
“I think there is water ahead,” William said. Sure enough, when everyone was qui
et the faint lapping of waves could be heard. Another pair of pressure doors, these open, and the water was louder.
It looked something like one of the underwater jumper bays in Atlantis, and perhaps it originally had been. Now, with the ice overreaching, it was an ice cavern half filled with water, a pale blue light descending through the ice from the sky above.
“It can’t be very thick,” William said, looking up. “Not and let so much light through. But I don’t see the outlet.”
“Underwater,” Ronon said. “The ice probably doesn’t go down very far in the seawater.”
“It’s enormous,” Laura said, looking off to the right. “Maybe there used to be some kind of energy shield or something and the ice formed over it. When the shield failed, it left this big ice dome.”
“It’s really beautiful,” Eva said.
Ronon nodded. “Yeah.”
“Maybe this whole planet was a penal colony,” Eva said.
Ronon shrugged noncommittally, his eyes on William, who was picking his way along the ice that rimmed the cavern, out toward a dark shape on the ice. “What are you doing?” Ronon called.
“Looking at this,” William called back. He bent over the whatever it was, his red jacket a bright spot against the white and blue. “Interesting. It looks like one of those squid. Part of a carcass. It might have washed up in here.”
“Funny place to wash up,” Eva began, and her breath caught in her throat.
“William!” Laura yelled in the same moment, and the archaeologist spun around.
Almost invisible against the ice, an enormous white shape reared up, half again William’s height, towering over him with a roar that echoed through the dome. Its ursine snout opened to show sharp teeth, and its forepaws had long claws, like the biggest polar bear Eva had ever imagined.
“Run!” Laura shouted.
“Drop!” Ronon shouted at the same time.
William stood stock still, whether in indecision between two entirely contradictory suggestions or just in sheer terror.