Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series

by Melissa Scott

  The jumper emerged from the Stargate into the capital’s main square, and Teyla reached for the radio.

  “Mr. Cai. This is Teyla. Is there any word from Colonel Sheppard?”

  “Nothing,” a voice answered promptly. Not Cai himself, Rodney thought, but otherwise didn’t recognize the voice. “And nothing more from Atlantis. No sign of problems here, though.”

  “That is good news,”Teyla said. “We are proceeding directly to the wreck. Teyla out.”

  *As fast as you can, please, Rodney,* she added silently, and Rodney obeyed.

  Even pushing the jumper to its best speed, it seemed to take forever before the wreck came into view. The last wisps of smoke had vanished and now there was just the heap of twisted metal, burrowed into the mountainside. It was late afternoon now, and the sun was retreating up the slopes, leaving what was left of the ship in shadow. Rodney brought the jumper down next to its fellow, aware that Dekaas was staring past him at the view screen.

  “What sort of ship is that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It belongs to a people we call the Asgard,” Elizabeth said. “Or perhaps the Vanir — two related peoples, one in our galaxy, one in yours.”

  Dekaas was still staring at the wreck as Rodney lowered the rear ramp. “Who shot them down?”

  Rodney gave him a sharp look. “Who said they were shot down?”

  “I can see engine damage from here,” Dekaas answered. “I’ve been with the Travelers for decades, I can recognize the aftermath of a firefight as well as anyone. Did you shoot it down?”

  “Well —”

  “Then why do you want me to save one of their crew?” Dekaas demanded. “What are you trying to get from them?”

  “We want information,” Teyla began, and Dekaas shook his head.

  “I won’t be party to torture.”

  “No one is torturing anyone,” Teyla said.

  “I shot it down,” Rodney said, “And you know what, I’m not at all sorry about it, because they were trying to kidnap Elizabeth and Ronon. But now that we’ve done it, I’d really like to know why they were trying to kidnap them, and the only person who can tell us that is the guy inside. Who, you know, may be dead by now.”

  Dekaas lifted his hands. “All right,” he said, and followed Teyla into the wreckage without further complaint. Elizabeth followed, and Rodney brought up the rear.

  As far as he could tell, nothing had changed since they’d left, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. The Vanir was still lying silent and motionless on a stretcher from the jumper, wrapped in one of the Mylar blankets from the first aid kit; Ronon was sitting on the floor with his back against one of the consoles — giving him a clear field of fire at the doorway, Rodney noted — and Sheppard was leaning on a console while Jackson studied something inscribed on a wall panel.

  “John,” Teyla said. “This is Dekaas, the doctor of whom I told you. Dekaas, this is Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard.”

  “Dekaas,” Sheppard said. “Thanks for being willing to help out here. That’s your patient.”

  “Colonel,” Dekaas said, warily, but he went to one knee beside the stretcher. “I have never seen such a person before. You called him an Asgard?”

  “Or Vanir,” Sheppard said.

  Dekaas folded the blanket back carefully. “You said there was a head injury, Elizabeth?” He ran his hands lightly down the Asgard’s limbs, pressed gently along what would have been its stomach without eliciting a response, then cupped the oversized skull.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth answered, “over its left ear. I think I feel a fracture there.”

  “Ah. Yes. I think you’re right. That’s not good.” Dekaas sat back on his heels. “And as far as you know, this is what they normally look like?”

  “Pretty much,” Sheppard said.

  “They’re all sort of putty-colored,” Rodney said, in spite of himself, “and nobody can tell them apart except maybe what’s-her-name, the engineer with the hiccups.”

  “Jack could,” Jackson said. He held out his tablet, and Dekaas took it warily. “This is all the information we have about the Asgard. It’s not much —”

  “And I don’t read Lantean,” Dekaas said. He looked from the drawing to the motionless figure in frustration.

  “I’ll translate,” Jackson said.

  There was nothing Rodney could do to help that an actual doctor — well, a Wraith-trained medic — wouldn’t do better and there was still the ship to think about. “Sheppard. Did you think to look for an infirmary on board?”

  Sheppard stared at him. “Wow, no, we never thought of that, Rodney, no wonder they call you a genius! Of course we did. It looks like it was forward, just behind the control center. Everything’s smashed, not even the emergency power is getting through.”

  “Why would they put it there?”

  “How would I know?

  “I should take a look.” Rodney pushed himself away, Sheppard’s voice trailing after him.

  “You do that, McKay.”

  The infirmary wasn’t hard to find, but, depressingly, Sheppard was right. There had been what looked like treatment beds or pods, but they were snapped from their bases and crumpled against the forward bulkhead. All the consoles were dark, the emergency lights dead, and when he tried to trace the circuitry, it ended into a splatted hunk of slag. Ok, he thought, we’re not going to get any help here. Let’s hope Dekaas really does know what he’s doing. He started back toward the rest of the team.

  Elizabeth watched closely while Dekaas examined the Vanir, wordlessly handing him things from his kit when he asked for them, as his expression grew more and more grim. At last Dekaas stood up. “I don’t know what I can do for him that you haven’t already done,” he said.

  “You’re the doctor,” John began.

  “Oh come on!” Rodney expostulated. “Surely you can do something! Don’t give me this there’s nothing you can do.”

  Dekaas squared his shoulders. “I don’t even know where his organs are or what his vital signs are supposed to be! You hand me someone of a species I’ve never seen before who has catastrophic injuries and what do you think I’m going to do? Just wave my hands over him and heal him?”

  John stepped between them. “Ok,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “Ok, what would you need to have a chance?”

  Dekaas shook his head. “Some idea what the baseline vitals for his species are. Some diagnostic equipment designed for his species. Not to mention little things like an operating theater.” He gestured around the wrecked Vanir ship. “If this was his ship, doesn’t it have first aid equipment at least?”

  “If it did, it was destroyed in the crash,” Teyla said. “Much of the front of the ship burned and is completely destroyed.”

  Dekaas shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. Without anything designed for him, I don’t see what I can do for him. I think the palliative care you’ve been giving him is the best we can do.”

  “Seriously?” Rodney began, his shrill tone masking concern. And he was concerned, Elizabeth thought. He didn’t want to watch this injured Vanir die while they had no idea how to help him. It wasn’t in Rodney’s makeup to accept death.

  “Rodney, why don’t you look around and see if you can salvage anything,” John said. “Maybe try to get into the ship’s computer system and get some information on this guy’s physiology.”

  “I can’t do that when the actual data storage is a pile of slag,” Rodney retorted.

  “Well maybe there’s a backup system,” John said. “You don’t know until you look.”

  Dekaas appeared troubled. Elizabeth put one hand on his elbow and steered him away from the quarreling gate team. “I’m sorry to have asked you to come here so fruitlessly,” she said.

  “I wish I could do something for him,” Dekaas said. He looked back at the Vanir lying beneath a blanket on one of the jumper’s stretchers. “As a doctor, that’s the worst part – failing a patient.”

&n
bsp; “You can’t blame yourself,” Elizabeth said. “If you’ve never even seen his kind before, how could you know what to do? A completely unfamiliar race…”

  “I’ve never seen his kind before, no.” Dekaas glanced around the wrecked Vanir ship. “But I feel like I’ve seen something like this. This kind of architecture, this kind of writing…” He shook his head.

  Elizabeth dropped her voice. “When you were with the Wraith?”

  “No. After that.” Dekaas ran his hand over the battered bulkhead, Asgard lettering still visible around the door frame. “Lettering like this.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a deserted world the Travelers use,” he said. “Nobody else comes there. It’s a fairly bleak world with a thin atmosphere and it’s mostly ocean, but there’s one set of caves that used to be some kind of installation. They use it for a supply depot.”

  “And it had writing like this?” Elizabeth tried to suppress the excitement in her voice.

  “On some of the walls. There’s some broken machinery – nothing works but the power supply. Some of the Travelers have figured out how to jack into the power supply to run lights and heaters. But somebody who knew more about it might be able to tell what some of the other equipment was or what it’s supposed to do.” Dekaas looked rueful. “We don’t read this language.”

  “But Daniel Jackson does,” Elizabeth said. She looked over his shoulder. “Daniel! Come over here a moment.”

  Daniel came, followed closely by John. “What’s up?”

  “It may be nothing,” Elizabeth said, “but Dekaas knows of what might be an abandoned Vanir installation. He says there’s some broken machinery and a power supply that still works.”

  “A power supply?” John said.

  “What kind of machinery?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dekaas said. “I was telling Elizabeth that we don’t read this language.”

  “If I could get a look at it…” Daniel began.

  “…there might be a database,” John said. “Or if we’re lucky some of the equipment is medical. Maybe even one of those healing pods they had back in the Milky Way. We should take this guy there and see.”

  Dekaas held up a hand. “The patient is barely stable. If we start trying to carry him around, he may die.”

  “If the damned stasis pods hadn’t failed when we released Elizabeth and Ronon,” Rodney began, and shook his head, scowling. “But they did.”

  John frowned. “And if we don’t get him some treatment, he’ll probably die. That’s where we were before. If I were him,” he jerked a thumb at the unconscious Vanir, “I’d rather try to get to something that might help than just lie here and hope for the best.”

  “I think that’s right,” Elizabeth said. “We can’t help him anymore here. Let’s take him to the facility Dekaas knows about and see if there is anything there that can help him. It’s the best shot we’ve got.”

  “Elizabeth,” Dekaas said. “There are no guarantees. I don’t know if any of the equipment is medical or if it can be operated even by someone who reads the language.”

  “Understood,” Elizabeth said. “Colonel, let’s get our patient ready for transport.”

  There was a long moment of silence, everyone looking at her. She had forgotten she wasn’t in charge, wasn’t Dr. Weir in command in Atlantis. This was John’s show, not hers.

  Then Teyla smiled. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Let’s go,” John said.

  Ember rested his off hand lightly on the frame of the long window, staring out into the deepening twilight. It was at this hour that Atlantis felt least hostile to him, most willing to tolerate his presence, and he could not help admiring its beauty, its towers of glass and metal wreathed in light. It was not alive, or at least it was not grown from living tissue, as a hive was, but in some sense, at least, he began to believe it lived. And he was one of the few Wraith, perhaps the only Wraith, to have seen this view without being a prisoner condemned to death. He was here, in fact, as something like an ally, to help the Lanteans in their search for Asgard sites, in exchange for the chance to examine what was found. He had walked freely into the towers, and would walk freely out again. It was a strange and alien thought, and neither he nor the city knew what to do with it.

  Not that he was unescorted, of course. There was a Marine guard at his door, and others would follow him if he asked to leave his quarters, though it had been made clear to him that there was some disturbance that had interrupted the search for Asgard sites. Some sort of contamination brought through the Stargate, he guessed, from the things that were being done and the things that were not said. That argued unusual carelessness on the Lanteans’ part, though they seemed confident in their ability to bring things under control again.

  He hoped it would be soon. His feeding hand twinged, the handmouth opening and closing involuntarily, and an image of the Marine at the door rose unbidden in his mind. He was full-fleshed, young and strong and full of life — and that was a thought that should not be pursued. Ember bared his teeth in a silent snarl, turning away from the window. He was hungry, and growing hungrier; were he on the hive, he would have fed a day ago, but here… Teyla had promised that there would be volunteers who would let him feed, but that was not an option, not unless he was truly starving.

  He glanced around his pair of rooms, so different from his comfortable quarters on Alabaster’s hive. It was all so open, so bright; in the day, the sun filled the larger room like water even after he had opaqued the windows to their fullest degree. The smaller room, clearly intended as sleeping space, was mercifully less bright, but it was still terribly open. He had taken the mattress from the bed and used it and the blankets and pillows to create something more nest-like in one corner, but it was still hard to fall asleep, surrounded by so much air. He missed the rhythms of the hive, the pulse of its functions just at the edge of hearing. Atlantis breathed, long soft sighs that were sometimes even strong enough to ruffle his hair, but there was no blood in it.

  The Lanteans had left him access to their communications system, or perhaps they had simply not chosen to disable the Ancient device that rested on one of the tables, and he eyed it thoughtfully. It had been more than a day since he had last spoken with anyone other than his escort. Perhaps it was time to remind them of his existence, and to find out what was going on.

  He touched the code they had given him, remembering the formulae the Lanteans used. It still seemed strange that they could not recognize each other’s voices. “It is I, Ember. I wish to speak to Dr. Zelenka if he is free.” And that, he thought, was a clever touch: Zelenka was a master of sciences physical; if the emergency was contamination, it should not be he who was dealing with it.

  There was a moment of silence, and then a female voice answered. “Banks here. Dr. Zelenka will be with you in just a moment.”

  Ember lifted an eyebrow at the machine, knowing it transmitted only sound. “Very well.”

  It was some time before Zelenka called, long enough for the last of the sunlight to have vanished from the city’s towers. The first strands of the aurora rose in the north, pale green against the purple sky, flickering behind the towers, and he was watching them coil slowly up from the horizon when the machine chimed again.

  “Ember. Zelenka here. Look, I’m sorry we’ve been neglecting you, but we’ve been a bit busy.”

  Ember tilted his head to one side. Was that a note of fear he heard in the human’s voice? And surely those were other human voices in the background, the words not distinguishable, but the tone sharp and alarmed. “You are in trouble.”

  “Everything is under control.”

  “I don’t wish to add to your troubles, but if this is a question of biological contamination —”

  “Who told you that?” That was a different voice, the blade who was the Consort Sheppard’s right hand.

  “No one,” Ember said. “I guessed it from the patterns of activity. And if that is your proble
m, I am a master of sciences biological. I may be able to help you.”

  “I don’t know,” Lorne began, and Zelenka interrupted.

  “He has a point, you know.”

  “And I am also here and affected by — whatever this is.” Ember couldn’t keep his voice from rising slightly.

  “Yes, that had also occurred to me,” Zelenka said. “Wait. I will contact Dr. Beckett.”

  The machine switched off before Ember could respond. He bared teeth at it, for the first time feeling a thread of fear work its way down the ridges of his spine. He had not really thought that the Lanteans could be so careless as to let some organism loose in their precious city, and yet it was beginning to sound as though that was exactly what had happened. And if that were the case… He shook himself. The odds were that anything that affected the Lanteans would not affect the Wraith, or at least not in the same way. He should be able to survive, though he could not in conscience use the Stargate if he had also been contaminated, and Guide would not want to risk bringing him back to the hive until they were sure he was free of any contagion. But if the humans died… For a bleak moment, he could see that future, trapped alone in the empty city, starving, stalking empty halls beneath the flames of the aurora. It would not come to that, he told himself. Guide would find a way to rescue him.

  A second chime sounded, and the door slid open to reveal not only a pair of Marines but a slender woman with dark hair cut short and blunt at her shoulders. “Ember.” She managed the word almost without a stumble, though her body language was distinctly wary. “I’m Dr. Wu. Dr. Zelenka says you’ve volunteered to help us analyze this bacteria?”