“I would be glad to be of assistance,” Ember answered, and knew he sounded equally wary.
“Good. Well. If you’d come with us, then?” She waved vaguely toward the corridor.
Ember followed her through the maze of Atlantis’s corridors, very aware of the Marines at his back. They both carried guns slung across their chests, and in his current state either one of them could do enough damage to overwhelm his ability to heal. His feeding hand twinged again, and he wished passionately that he could feed. The taller of the Marines was strong and hearty; Dr. Wu shone with the inner fire of one who lived for the mind. He could almost feel their life force flowing into him, and he had to close his feeding hand tight to hide the sudden gaping of his handmouth.
“Dr. Beckett,” Wu said, as the laboratory door opened for her. “I’ve brought the Wraith — the Wraith scientist.”
“Good.” The man to whom she had spoken did not look up from his microscope, but typed one-handed on a laptop that sat beside him. He straightened then, checked the screen, and finally looked up, meeting Wu’s eyes with a smile. “Thank you, Marie. Corporal, you won’t be needed.”
“Major Lorne’s orders, sir,” the taller man said. “We’ll just wait right here by the door, I promise we won’t be in your way. In fact, if you’d like, I’ll send Patterson for some fresh coffee.”
Beckett seemed to relax at that. “Aye, that would be helpful. And a tea for me, if you would.”
“Right away, Doc,” the smaller Marine said, and disappeared down the corridor.
“So you’re Ember,” Beckett said, coming out from behind his workstation, and Ember nodded once.
“And you are Dr. Beckett.” There was something odd about him, something off in the flavor of his life-force, and Ember frowned abruptly. “A clone?”
Beckett scowled. “Aye. Though that’s a fairly personal question.”
“I’m sorry.” Ember cocked his head. “It’s just I didn’t think the Lanteans — you — were capable —” He stopped, knowing he’d said too much, and Beckett sighed.
“Actually, it was done by Michael. And I’m not at all sure I want to talk about it.”
“Michael,” Ember repeated. The renegade his own people knew as Lastlight. It was an ill-omened name, a cleverman both brilliant and deranged, damaged beyond hope by both the Lantean attempts to transform him and by the rejection of his own queen. “I am sorry.”
“Well. It’s all right.” Beckett paused, a wry smile curving the corners of his mouth. “Though I’m curious to know how you could tell.”
“Clones feel different,” Ember said, startled. “Your life-force. It’s — thicker. Shorter? No.” He shook his head, tracing a shape in the air with his off hand. “A cord, not a river?”
“Interesting.” Beckett’s annoyance had faded, replaced by curiosity. “Have you ever encountered the Asgard?”
“Not personally. The hive on which I was born fought them over several of our feeding grounds, but I’m a cleverman, not a blade. Why?”
“I wondered what they felt like. They’ve cloned themselves so many times they’ve wrecked their base DNA.” Beckett shook his head. “But that’s not important at the moment, though I’d like to talk to you a bit more about this when things calm down. Right now, we’ve got more important things to worry about.”
“Perhaps you could tell me what has happened?” Ember moved closer to the workstation, careful not to go too fast, and Beckett nodded.
“We picked up an unknown bacterium on a planet we were hoping to use as — well, never mind for what, it’s not important. The main thing is, it destroys petroleum-based plastics, and we can’t seem to find an effective decontamination procedure.”
“Have you isolated the organism?” Ember asked.
“Yes.” Beckett swung a screen so that he could see it more clearly. “It’s not in any of our databases, and there are structures that make me think it’s not a naturally-occurring organism.”
Ember frowned at the image, considering the shapes. Lantean characters filled a smaller window — results of their analysis, he guessed, but he couldn’t read enough of the symbols for it to be helpful — and he pushed it aside. Beckett was right, the original bacterium had certainly been artificially created, though it had bred with other strains to produce this variant. “This is your model? May I work with it?”
Beckett waved his hands. “Be my guest.”
Ember frowned at the keyboard, orienting himself, then began removing the unfamiliar pieces of the structure. It didn’t take long for the new pattern to emerge, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. “I know what this is, this part of it.”
“Aye?” Beckett leaned over his shoulder.
“It’s a —” Ember groped for a word, shaking his head. “It’s one of our tools, a common one, we use it to dissolve certain compounds after we’ve created pathways within an organic structure. We prefer petroleum-based plastics for laying out vascular systems, they don’t interact with the hive itself — but perhaps that’s better not spoken of, either. My point is, I know what this is. Or at least what it started out as. We should be able to deactivate it.”
“Let’s not hang about, then,” Beckett said. “Tell me what you need.”
John brought the jumper to a gentle landing in the square beside Sateda’s Stargate, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that the Vanir was still all right. It still lay unmoving on the stretcher, great eyes closed, but Dekaas nodded.
“Still breathing.”
“All right.” John glanced at his controls, seeing the second jumper still a good twenty minutes away. Rodney was pushing the damaged engine as much as he dared, but it still couldn’t make full speed. “As soon as McKay gets here, we’ll head for this planet. In the meantime, I’m going to check in with Atlantis.”
He lowered the back ramp as he spoke, and clambered out. Neither Dekaas nor Elizabeth said anything, and Jackson was still busy with his tablet, running through the Asgard files one more time as though it might turn up something new.
Unsurprisingly, Cai came out to meet him, and John put on his best smile. “Cai! Any news?”
“No sign of the contamination having reached us here,” Cai answered, “though we’re going to continue to keep those supplies separate until Atlantis tells us they’re clean.”
“Yeah, I was hoping they might have managed that by now.”
“Not so far as we’ve heard,” Cai said. “If you want to talk to them — help yourself.”
“Thanks.” John crossed to the building where they had set up the radio system — Ronon snickered every time he looked at the place, said it had been one of the raunchiest bars in the city — to find one of Atlantis’s technicians reading a battered paperback. She sat up hastily as he entered, and John gave what he hoped was a disarming smile. “Hey — Dr. Parker, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
She looked and sounded about twelve, which made John feel suddenly old. “Any news from Atlantis?”
“Nothing since Teyla returned,” Parker said. “Shall I raise them for you?”
“Thanks.”
John waited while she dialed the Stargate and then made contact with the gate room.
“Lorne here. Everything all right there, Colonel? Teyla said you’d gotten the doctor you needed.”
“We’re fine,” John said. “What’s your status?”
As he had expected, there was the slightest of pauses. “We’re still trying to get the contamination under control. We have it mostly contained, and Dr. Beckett thinks he has a possible counter-agent.” Lorne paused again. “He thought that the bacterium might be artificially created, so he’s got the Wraith, Ember, working on it with him.”
Great, John thought. One more thing we’re going to owe Guide. It wasn’t helpful to actually say it, though, and he settled for, “Is this a Wraith weapon?”
“Apparently not. Beckett says it’s more like a tool that’s apparently gotten loose and maybe mutated or mayb
e interbred with some local bacteria. Ember seems to think he can get it under control pretty easily, though.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was something in his tone that made John hesitate. “What’s the bad news?”
“Dr. Parrish and his team — they were investigating PGX-239 — they reported a discharge of energy bolts near the Stargate. Dr. Parrish says it wasn’t actually aimed at them, and there’s still no sign of any life bigger than the insects, but Captain Aulich asked if we had any available back-up. Trouble is, we don’t have that many Marines off-world right now, and most of them are needed where they are.”
“Are you saying something shot at them?”
“Dr. Parrish says not, sir. He says he thinks it’s a natural phenomenon. I’ve told him to divert to Sateda or PVX-993 if that judgement changes, those are the safest options we’ve got right now.”
“All right.”
“Is there any chance you could spare them Ronon and one of the Marines on Sateda?” Lorne asked. “I don’t want to pull all our guys off of Sateda, given how many civilians we’ve got there at the moment, but Ronon would make a big difference. And he knows this galaxy.”
He’d hate not having Ronon with them, particularly if the Vanir were involved, but if something was shooting at the botany team… There were never enough men, and the ones you had were never where you needed them. “I’ll send Ronon.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
John bit his lip, knowing there was a question Lorne carefully wasn’t asking. By rights, he ought to return to Atlantis, but that was putting himself into quarantine, and right now there didn’t seem to be any reason to do that, especially if Beckett was right and they were about to get the problem fixed. “All right, Major, carry on. We’ve got a line on a possible Vanir installation — an abandoned one — so we’re going to take our patient there to see if we can’t save him. We need to find out what they wanted from Elizabeth, and there’s no way we can get anything from him in this condition.” He glanced out the window, seeing Rodney’s jumper making its final approach, and recited the new gate address. “We’ll check in again once we’re there.”
“Very good, sir,” Lorne said, and John motioned for Parker to cut the channel.
Ronon was waiting in the main square, talking to a hard-faced, gold-skinned woman whose complexion had the weathered look that John was beginning to associate with Satedan scavengers. Ronon looked up at John’s approach, patted the woman on her shoulder, and came to join him, saying, “We’re going now?”
“Change of plans,” John said. “I need you to back up one of the other teams.”
“Trouble?” Ronon didn’t seem to move, but his posture tightened somehow.
“We’re not sure. Dr. Parrish took a botany team to PGX-239 and apparently there’s something there that shoots energy bolts. Parrish says he doesn’t think it’s actually shooting at them, but they wanted back-up just in case. Lorne can’t send any Marines off Atlantis — obviously — and we don’t have enough people already off-world. So I want to send you.”
Ronon looked down at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you, Sheppard?”
“You’re the last person I want to lose from this mission,” John said. “But you’re the best man I’ve got.”
There was a little silence, and then Ronon nodded slowly. “All right. PGX-239?”
“Yeah.” John gripped his shoulder. “Thanks, buddy.”
Rodney and Teyla had already joined Elizabeth in the undamaged jumper, and John settled himself into the pilot’s seat, Rodney at his side. Dekaas recited the address again and John punched it in, then waited while the Stargate lit and opened.
“Still ok back there, Doc?” he asked.
“As far as I can tell,” Dekaas answered, his voice grim.
The tone said more than the words, and John bit his lip. “Right. We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY CAME out of the Stargate over a rocky, broken land that might have held ruins, though it was impossible to tell as quickly as they moved and as dark as it was, a sort of purply twilight with a sky studded with stars. Daniel craned his neck over the seat in front of him, over Teyla’s shoulder as she sat in the shotgun seat. “It’s night.”
Behind him in the back with the injured Vanir on his stretcher, Dekaas replied, “It’s always like this. This planet is a long way from its sun.”
“Though clearly not so far that there isn’t liquid water,” Rodney said as the jumper soared over the verge of a dark sea, sharp cliffs and little islands outlined by the white foam of breaking waves.
“Not that far, no,” Dekaas said equitably. “The climate isn’t bad except for the polar regions. There are some plants that can handle this little light and some sea life too. But the Travelers have never settled this world for obvious reasons.”
“There must be subsurface heating,” Rodney said. “An active core —”
“It’s definitely too dark for agriculture,” Daniel said.
“Yes,” Dekaas said. “As I said, we’ve just used it as a depot.”
“Ok,” John said from the pilot’s seat. “Where is this place?”
Dekaas came forward, standing between the rows of seats. “I’ve never come here from the Stargate. I’ve always arrived on a Traveler ship from orbit. It’s in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, the largest island in an archipelago that curves west.”
“I can find it from that,” John said, the jumper obediently creating a heads-up display map of the planet at his thought. Seas and islands filled in.
“It’s mostly water,” Daniel said.
“93 per cent,” John said, glancing up at the display. “Not too bad. There.” He pointed. “Is that the archipelago you mean, Dekaas?”
“That looks right.”
“Ok, folks,” John said. “About twenty minutes flight time. Is there a good place to park the jumper?”
“There’s a landing field the Travelers use,” Dekaas affirmed. “It should be more than large enough.”
“Great.”
Daniel glanced out the window at the dark waves, now featureless beneath the flawless, starred sky. How many worlds like this were there, worlds that were marginally inhabitable but weren’t because there were so many places that were better? Most people on Earth still wondered if there were other planets capable of supporting human life. How would they even begin to deal with the truth – that there were so many that the humans who were there ahead of them couldn’t be bothered with most of them? It was an embarrassment of riches. Most people on Earth – well, if the truth about the Stargate program was ever believed, it would throw society into a crisis. The biggest argument against revelation was the consequence. It would be loosing a bear into a crowded marketplace, starting an unimaginable chain of events that could topple governments, economic systems, religions, entire ways of life. No wonder everyone so far had preferred to keep the secret, to pass the responsibility for revelation along for another year or two – everyone except a few people here and there who thought no further than the revelation itself. Daniel certainly hadn’t started out a fan of military secrets, but the Stargate was a secret he was willing to take to his grave if necessary. He’d seen too many ruins of civilizations torn apart by an unforeseen crisis. He wasn’t going to be the person to precipitate one.
Elizabeth turned around in the seat next to him, glancing back toward Dekaas. “How is our friend doing?”
“He’s holding on,” Dekaas said. “Respiration is weak but steady. I think he’s comatose. I can’t tell you how much brain damage there is. Even if we find equipment, it may be too late.”
“Understood,” Elizabeth said.
“Let’s hope we’re not too late,” Daniel said.
“We’re coming up on the island,” John said, and Daniel shifted to see it coming up in the front window, a darker mass against the sea limned by the white of b
reakers that gleamed more brightly than they ought to.
“Bioluminesence?” Daniel asked.
“That seems reasonable,” Elizabeth replied. Her face had lost some of the tension that had marked it as she returned to the familiar routines and familiar people she had known before. It took time to come back, as Daniel knew. But the best thing for it was people – and the missions you’d cared about before.
John Sheppard put the jumper down gently on a wide flat place just below the crest of the island. It was open on three sides, the fourth being a rocky pinnacle that crowned the island.
“That’s where the entrance is,” Dekaas said.
“I see it,” John said easily, and as he brought the jumper to a halt Daniel did too. There were what appeared to be four bay doors that covered a break in the cliff, but now they were all jammed open.
“Definitely Vanir,” Daniel said. “They’re the only ones we know of who typically construct doors as four-part irises. Other races tend to either have one or two moving planes that open to either side as the Ancients did, or up and down as the Wraith do. The Goa’uld appropriated technology as they found it, thereby creating an eclectic…”
“Can we save the lecture on doors?” Rodney snapped. “We all know what a door is.”
“I’m just saying that those doors look Asgard.”
“That’s great,” John said. “Now let’s go see what we can find. “Teyla, Rodney, and Daniel, you’re with me. Elizabeth, would you mind staying with Dekaas and our patient until we check the place out? No reason to haul him all over until we know what we’ve got.”
“Absolutely,” Elizabeth said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” John said, and opened the rear hatch of the jumper.
Ronon watched the puddle jumper vanish through the Stargate. The wormhole winked out behind it and he allowed himself a sigh. If this — thing — on PGX-239 turned out to be nothing, he was going to be annoyed. He’d been looking forward to seeing what they could find out from the Vanir.
“Dex?” That was Cai, coming across the gate square to join him. “You’re not going with Sheppard and the others?”
Stargate Atlantis: Third Path: Book 8 in the Legacy series Page 7