Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series
Page 1
THIRD PATH
Book eight of the LEGACY series
Melissa Scott & Jo Graham
An original publication of Fandemonium Ltd, produced under license from MGM Consumer Products.
Fandemonium Books
PO Box 795A
Surbiton
Surrey KT5 8YB
United Kingdom
Visit our website: www.stargatenovels.com
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Presents
STARGATE ATLANTIS™
JOE FLANIGAN RACHEL LUTTRELL JASON MOMOA JEWEL STAITE
ROBERT PICARDO and DAVID HEWLETT as Dr. McKay
Executive Producers BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER
Created by BRAD WRIGHT & ROBERT C. COOPER
STARGATE ATLANTIS is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
© 2004-2015 MGM Global Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved.
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER is a trademark of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion Corp. © 2015 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Photography and cover art: Copyright © 2015 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
WWW.MGM.COM
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written consent of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. If you purchase this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.
ISBN: 978-1-905586-70-7 Printed in the United States of America
For Amy Griswold and Sally Malcolm,
the rest of the Legacy team.
Table of Contents
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
“DAMN IT, McKay.” John Sheppard urged the damaged puddle jumper to its best speed, ignoring the warnings flashing across his control boards. In the distance, he could see McKay’s puddle jumper, and beyond it the greater bulk of the Vanir ship that they were chasing. His own main propulsion unit was damaged, yes, but everything else was holding together, and there was no way McKay could stop the Vanir ship from escaping without some help. And the Vanir had to be stopped: not only had Ronon been caught up in their transport beam, but Elizabeth Weir had been taken with him. Elizabeth… He had given her up for dead three years ago, endured her return in a Replicator’s body, and thought he’d come to terms with losing her. When Rodney had come back from his suicide mission claiming to have been saved by an Ascended version of Elizabeth, John had been skeptical, but there had been enough evidence to make it worth pursuing. And then… He checked his altitude, urging the puddle jumper to gain height as the ground grew rougher beneath them, rolling hills turning to steeper foothills. And then, against all odds, they’d found her — as he would have expected, she’d found them, worked the problem, gotten herself to Sateda. He’d seen her, spoken with her just long enough to be sure it was in some meaningful sense Elizabeth Weir, and then the Vanir had appeared out of nowhere to snatch her away. He didn’t know why they wanted her — didn’t care — but he was going to get her back.
In the distance, he saw a flash of light, and the puddle jumper reported that McKay had fired more drones. John checked the auto-repair circuits, and asked for more speed. The puddle jumper tried to answer, shuddering under him, but warnings flared across his displays.
“All right, all right,” he said, and let the puddle jumper settle back into optimum flight. McKay had to hold them, had to stop them from leaving the atmosphere. “You can do it, Rodney,” he said, under his breath. “Just hold them for me, that’s all you have to do —”
There was another flash in the sky, and a smudge that might have been smoke, quickly whipped away by wind. The puddle jumper reported that the other craft had slowed, that Sheppard was starting to gain on them. “Come on, Rodney —”
A third flash, and he checked the telemetry, frowning at the sudden deceleration. “Rodney…”
“No!” McKay’s voice was suddenly sharp in his earpiece. “No, no, no —”
“What?” John checked his boards again. The Vanir ship had slowed still further, and was losing altitude fast. “Jumper two, what’s your status?”
“They’re going to crash,” McKay said.
John swore, but one look at the warnings already flickering on the displays told him he was pushing the jumper to its limits. At least the sensors had a good lock on McKay’s jumper; there would be no trouble finding the crash. “Stay with them,” he said, and turned his attention to the controls.
It wasn’t long before he saw the plume of black smoke rising from the slopes ahead of him, but it seemed to take hours before he could bring the jumper down beside McKay’s machine. McKay was already out, of course, poking at the twisted metal of the Vanir ship, and as soon as the jumper’s door opened he waved and shouted.
“Come on, Sheppard! We’ve got to find them!”
“Hang on,” John said. McKay already had one first aid kit, he was pleased to see; he grabbed the second as he left the jumper, and then stopped, studying the wreck.
“Come on!” McKay turned back toward the ship, but John caught his arm.
“Wait!” He scanned the wreck, biting his lip as he took in the extent of the damage. The smoke had cleared — presumably fire suppression systems had done their work — but the forward quarter of the ship was buried deep in the rocky ground. Buried and crumpled, he amended, wincing. Nothing in that section could possibly have survived. If Ronon and Elizabeth had been in the control section — He shoved that thought away. “How much do you know about Asgard ships?”
“What?” McKay blinked, shook his head. “I’ve read papers, why? How does that matter?”
“Do you know where they’d keep prisoners?”
McKay blinked again. “No. We haven’t exactly spent a lot of time as prisoners of the Asgard, considering that they were kind of our allies.”
“What about when you and Jackson were taken prisoner?”
“Stasis pods,” McKay said. “They didn’t let us out until we got to the planet.”
John bit his lip again. Stasis pods needed power and, from the look of the ship, it would be running on back-ups if there was any power at all. Surely stasis pods would have failsafes, he told himself, and looked back at McKay. “Let’s go.”
A side hatch had broken open in the crash, and John climbed carefully through the jagged gap, trying not to burn himself on the hot metal. He found himself in a narrow corridor, lit only by the light from the torn hull, and he played the light from his P90 around the area as McKay clambered in after him.
“Maintenance corridor, I think,” McKay said, after a moment. “Try to your right.”
John moved carefully forward, hunching his shoulders as the ceiling sagged toward him, but a few yards along, he found a hatch. It was unlocked, the mechanism still moving smoothly, and he pushed it open, P90 at the ready. There was more light
beyond the hatch, pale but definite, and McKay gave a gasp of relief.
“All right. They’ve got emergency power, at least.”
“That’s a mixed blessing,” John said.
“It’s good if we want to find Elizabeth alive. And Ronon.” McKay paused. “Of course, yes, it may mean that there are also some Vanir around, which, no, that’s not so great.”
“Yeah.” John turned slowly. They’d come out into what was obviously a main corridor, a weak band of emergency lighting glowing along the center of the ceiling. The walls were smooth, gray, unmarked, the deck only a little darker, though toward the ship’s bow the ceiling was cracked and caved in, spilling a tangle of cables.
“There’s a hatch back here,” McKay said. “Hang on — I’ve got it.”
John turned, keeping his P90 ready. “Anything?”
“No sign of Vanir.” McKay peered cautiously through the opening. “No sign of anything, but I think — yeah, if we go this way, we should hit a central corridor. That should be the most efficient way to search.”
“Good enough,” John said.
The central corridor lay about thirty feet along, wider and taller than any of the other corridors they’d seen so far. More compartments opened off of it, some doors jarred open, some still sealed, and a string of lights in the ceiling flashed alternately blue and orange, adding weird shadows to the emergency lighting.
“Forward?” John said, after a moment, and McKay nodded.
“Checking the compartments as we go.”
“I’ll cover you,” John said.
The first two compartments were already open, doors fully retracted into the bulkheads. Both contained only a few pieces of furniture that seemed to be attached to the deck and bulkheads, and they moved on quickly. The next door was jammed halfway open, but it was enough to see that it held more of the same gray furniture. There was a scattering of something that looked like they might be DVDs on the deck, if DVDs were matte purple triangles. McKay gave them a covetous look, but John pushed him on.
“We can come back for those.”
The rest of the compartments were empty, too, though their doors were jammed and cracked and the deck underfoot was starting to make ominous snapping sounds. “We must be getting close to the control room,” John said, and adjusted his grip on the P90.
“Yes. Not that I think there’s going to be anything left that’ll be of use to us —” McKay stopped abruptly, grimacing in disgust. “Ugh, do you smell that?”
“Yeah.” It was coming from the bulkhead just ahead of them, an ugly mix of hot metal and ash and an acrid, electric scent underlain with something sickly and vaguely sweet. John made himself try the hatch, and wasn’t surprised when it jammed. He slung his P90 out of the way and tried again, using both hands, and this time the heavy metal slid sideways a few inches, releasing another wave of the smell.
“Oh, that’s not nice,” McKay said.
John didn’t bother to answer, but adjusted his P90 so that he could shine its light into the gap. He caught a glimpse of twisted metal and a few thin curls of smoke, and what looked like a Vanir hand protruding from between two fallen beams. It looked surprisingly vulnerable dangling there, and he looked away, tasting bile.
“Ok, nothing there we can do anything about.”
“Are you sure?” McKay began, pushing past to look for himself, and stopped abruptly. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” John said again. If Elizabeth and Ronon had been in the control room, they were definitely dead, sliced to pieces and crushed by the weight of metal. But there was no reason to think they were there, he told himself. The rest of the ship was intact, and McKay and Jackson had been put into stasis.
“That’s an Asgard hand,” McKay said. He looked a little green, but had himself well under control. “Well, a Vanir’s, anyway. Not human.”
“We keep looking,” John said, and knew he sounded grim.
They made their way back down the main corridor. Once they passed the cross corridor where they’d come in, they began searching the compartments, but most of them were the same nearly-empty spaces they’d seen before. One had been hung with viewscreens, a ring circling nearly the entire compartment just below the ceiling, but all of them were cracked, and one was just an empty frame, with a spill of something acid-yellow down the compartment wall.
“Let’s not touch that,” John said, and for once McKay nodded.
The next compartment looked as though it might have been some sort of lab, though the screens of the workstations were also shattered, and all the loose material had been flung violently against the forward bulkhead.
“This has to be a good sign,” McKay said. “Right? Things are in a lot better shape back here.”
It was true, but John didn’t dare let himself hope. “Stasis pods. Can you find them?”
“If you can find me a working console, yes.”
John nodded. “Let’s go, then.”
The next two compartments were much the same, all the equipment destroyed, but when John glanced into the third, he caught his breath. There was a lot less trash on the floor, and no broken equipment; instead, the consoles looked intact and at least one of the screens was dark but undamaged. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed it back. “McKay! Take a look at this.”
He stopped, so suddenly that McKay collided with him. The consoles were mostly intact, all right, and on the floor between the two rows of control boards lay an unconscious Vanir.
“What — oh.” McKay sounded just as shocked as John felt, and John shook himself back to business.
“See if you can figure out what this all is, and if it’s safe to get it working. I’m going to take a look at this guy.”
“Or whatever,” McKay said, and turned his attention to the nearest console.
John went to one knee beside the Vanir. He’d forgotten how small the Asgard were, just about three feet tall, gray and skinny with wrinkled skin and oversized heads. This one’s eyes were closed, which made it look even more fragile. John felt carefully along the thin neck, wondering if this was where you found its pulse. He felt nothing, but as he moved his hand away, he thought he felt the ghost of its breath against his wrist. He froze, and a long moment later it came again, the faintest touch of air on his skin.
“I think this one’s alive,” he said, “but it’s not looking good.”
“I’ve found the stasis pods,” McKay said. “Damn it, I can’t operate them from here — something seems to be wrong with the remote controls.”
“Then we’ll go to them,” John said. He pulled one of the Mylar blankets from his first aid kit and tucked it around the unconscious Vanir, not daring to do anything more. Once they’d freed Elizabeth and Ronon, someone on Atlantis would probably be able to tell them the best way to treat a Vanir.
McKay led them down a side corridor, past compartments that showed even less damage than before, and John allowed himself to hope that they might find the stasis pods similarly undamaged.
“Here,” McKay said, and shoved at a stubborn door. John put his shoulder to it as well, and it slid back to reveal a narrow room dominated by a row of translucent cylinders. Three were empty, their lights all out; the remaining two showed a steady pattern of blue at top and bottom.
“Elizabeth and Ronon?” It was impossible to be sure through the clouded glass, but certainly the one on the left was big enough to be Ronon.
“Uh-huh.” McKay was already busy at the nearest console. “Ok, they have power, and plenty of it — looks like there’s a separate back-up source for this whole system, probably some sort of battery. Life signs check out, so we should be — Oh.”
“Rodney…”
McKay looked up, his face stricken. “The main computer is dead. I can’t find any preprogrammed routine to get them out of here.”
“Ok, that’s not good.” John looked at the pods, wondering how long this battery would last, and made himself look back at McKay. “Can you figure out how to do it?”
John considered the question, but he knew McKay was right. The sooner they got Ronon and Elizabeth out, the better, and there was the injured Vanir to consider — he knew he personally had a few questions he wanted to ask that being. “All right. I’m going to take your jumper back to the Stargate and pick up the rest of the team. It’s going to take me about an hour to get there and back. Will you be all right that long?”
Will they be all right, he meant, and McKay seemed to pick up the real question. “This battery-like object should last several days, so that’s all right. But the sooner the better, Sheppard.”
“Right,” John said, and turned away.
Teyla Emmagen stood in the center of the new Satedan gate square, trying to concentrate on the discussion between Ushan Cai, Margin Bri, the woman Cai had introduced as his head scavenger, and Daniel Jackson. At least, at the moment it was staying within the bounds of what she would consider a discussion, and it was important to keep it there, but her eyes kept straying to the horizon beyond the Stargate. John and Rodney had taken off in pursuit of the Vanir ship, and so far they had heard nothing. If they had lost the ship, John would have radioed, she told herself, for the hundredth time. If they had rescued Ronon and Elizabeth, they would have radioed. So they were still somewhere in between, still chasing or still trying to break the others free. Or they were dead, of course, but she would not let herself think of that possibility. Instead, she fixed her smile more firmly on her face, and forced herself to pay attention.