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

by Melissa Scott

  “And I think we must,” Ember answered.

  “We’re running out of time.” That was Sindye, looking up from her sample boxes. “The rate of deterioration is starting to accelerate again, and I’m seeing more anomalous DNA. And there are the off-world teams to think about.”

  “There is nothing you can do about them,” Ember said. In fact, the only thing that would help them was to destroy the alfalgeolis, but the Lanteans seemed incapable of accepting that answer.

  “How long do we have?” Zelenka asked.

  “With the mutation, there’s no telling,” Sindye said.

  “It may happen now, or tomorrow, or ten days from now,” Ember said. “The timing cannot be predicted, only that it will happen.”

  “Which means we have to choose now,” Beckett said. “It’ll take at least three hours to manufacture enough of the stuff to make a difference, and probably more like four.”

  “And the aerosols cannot be placed in an instant,” Zelenka said. “I’ll need an hour and a half. Two hours would be better.”

  “Then I say we go with this one,” Sindye said. “It’s the best of the bunch, 97.36 per cent kill rate, and we’ll buy enough time to attack again if anything does survive.”

  “It’s not good enough,” Ember said.

  “But we don’t have anything better,” Beckett said. “And we’re out of time.”

  “I had an idea,” Ember said. “I tried it in the models, and the simulation is running.”

  “Let me look at it,” Beckett said.

  Ember’s claws clicked against the keys as he forwarded the files to Beckett’s machine.

  “That’s a different approach,” Beckett said, after a moment. “I see what you’ve done, but we can’t just go at it blind.”

  Sindye leaned cautiously over Ember’s shoulder, and he moved back to let her see. “What if we make up both compounds? By the time we’ve finished, we’ll know if this works.”

  “We don’t have the equipment,” Beckett said. “If we tried it, we wouldn’t end up with enough of either one.”

  “I am right,” Ember said. He took a deep breath, groping for the words that would convince the Lanteans. “You are out of time, not just for us, here on this station, but for your people off-world. This is my craft, my art, and I know this will work better than the other compound that we have developed. I have spent my life making such things — I am Master of Sciences Biological, and I would, I do, stake my life on it.”

  There was a silence, and then Zelenka said, “You’re that sure?”

  Ember nodded. “I am.”

  He heard Zelenka take a breath. “Then I say we do it. One thing we know about the Wraith, they know how to manipulate living matter.”

  “Dr. Sindye?” Beckett asked.

  “I don’t —” She stopped, shaking her head. “Yes. Yes, let’s do it.”

  “And I agree,” Beckett said softly. “It’s a hell of a risk, but —”

  “I am right,” Ember said. “And it will destroy the alflageolis.”

  “It had better,” Beckett said, and cut the connection.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE SUN was setting behind a rising bank of clouds, the disk hidden entirely while the tops of the clouds were spread with scarlet light. The air was thicker, growing cooler and more damp as the sun was withdrawn, and a tendril of breeze caressed Ronon’s bare arms. He’d felt all these things before, on a dozen other worlds, and wasn’t surprised to see a flash of light in the sky to the west. Aulich’s thunderstorms must be on the way. He realized he was counting, automatically, following the old Satedan rule that counting the time between flash and thunder and dividing by seven would give a rough distance to the strike, but there was no answering sound. Another flash split the air, and he realized it was a distant plant, firing straight up into the air.

  “I wondered if any of the insects would swarm,” Dr. Hunt said. She was rolling her sleeves down against the breeze, hat jammed firmly on her head to control her fine hair. “It looks like they’re starting.”

  “So those plants are feeding?” Ronon shaded his eyes to try to see more clearly, but detail was drowned in the blinding scarlet light.

  “I think so. Of course, we’ll be able to see more clearly as they get closer.”

  She sounded surprisingly cheerful about the idea, and Ronon barely stopped himself from shaking his head. The scientists’ priorities sometimes seemed a little skewed. “I’m sure that will be interesting.”

  “Fascinating,” Hunt agreed, and then looked faintly embarrassed. “I mean, yes, I see that it’s also a problem, but…”

  Ronon clapped her on the shoulder. “You can always take notes from the shelter,” he said, and turned away.

  Aulich was still working on her array of equipment, but as he approached, she closed the lid of her laptop and began unplugging one of the peripheral components. “I want to keep scanning for as long as possible,” she said, “but once the storms get closer, all of this, this pile of stuff, is going to be a lightning hazard.”

  Ronon eyed the stack warily. It was nearly up to his shoulders, a generator at the bottom and various bits of sensor equipment and computer gear piled apparently haphazardly on top of each other. “More like a lightning rod.”

  “Yeah.” Aulich grimaced. “Though I’ve been wondering if I could use it to deflect strikes from the shelter? Though of course the Stargate itself is the biggest thing around.”

  Ronon looked over his shoulder at the shallow shelter they had scraped into the side of the hill, the leaf-shingled roof tilted to shed the rain. The team would just fit beneath it, jammed shoulder to shoulder: not particularly comfortable, but it would help conserve warmth until the storms passed and they could get a fire going. At least the resinous bark would make lighting damp wood easier. “Anything new?”

  “I’m definitely picking up two lines of storms.” Aulich lifted the laptop’s lid again, turning it so that Ronon could see the screen. In a black box, a line of yellow flecked with red stretched from one edge to the next; behind it was another, wider band, and between them were thin strands of green. Aulich touched a key, and white symbols popped into view, almost obscuring the lines. “That’s the lightning. You can see it’s about the same in both lines, though the second line is a little dryer. Not a lot of fun, though.”

  “No.” Ronon studied the screen. “How big are these? I mean, how long will it take for these to pass over us — I assume they will pass over us?”

  Aulich nodded. “It looks to me as though these storms are essentially a feature of twilight on this planet. The ground cools off really quickly once the sun goes down, and that fuels these big lines of thunderstorms. They’re not entirely solid —” She touched the laptop again, making the lightning disappear and then zooming in on the closer line of storms. The band of yellow resolved into a broken, jagged pattern, each section of yellow narrowly fringed in green, many with cores of red. She was right, there were gaps between the sections, not big ones, but spaces that showed no color at all. “And they’re moving fast. About seventy-five kilometers per hour. The first band is only about ten kilometers wide, so it won’t take long to pass us. If we get lucky, and hit a gap, or even the fringes of a storm, rather than the heart, it may not be that bad.”

  “What are the chance of that?”

  “Hard to tell. The lines are stable, but the storms in them shift in size.” Aulich shrugged. “At the moment, this is the section that would hit us.” She pointed to the edge of one of the larger yellow sections. “At least I’m not picking up any hail. Or any kind of rotation that would give us tornadoes. This is just straight-line wind and rain and a lot of lightning.”

  Just a lot of lightning. Ronon glanced involuntarily at the Stargate, towering over everything else in sight, and Aulich gave a grunt of amusement.

  “Well, yes, that does constitute a hazard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Although, like my equipment, it might decrease the chance of a st
rike on us. But there’s ground conductivity to worry about. Lightning’s weird, it can travel through the ground sometimes. I think we’re far enough away, but — it’s unpredictable.”

  Ronon nodded, feeling the breeze on his arms again, a soft, testing touch, promising more to come. The sky had darkened further, and in the east he could see a single bright star low on the horizon. A second winked into view as he watched. He looked back to the west just in time to catch another volley of bolts from the pod-plants. This one was closer, clearly plants rather than lightning, but behind the flashes, the horizon was blue-black with cloud. “How long till it hits?”

  “Just under six hours.”

  “How long do you need to dismantle all of this?”

  “An hour, hour and a half.” Aulich considered the question. “I can pull off the non-essential stuff now, try to stack it out of harm’s way — or, more likely, where it’s not going to harm us. I wish to hell we could get things back to Atlantis. I hate the idea of losing so much equipment.”

  “If you sent it back to Atlantis, it would be destroyed, too,” Ronon said. “There’s a lot of plastic here.”

  “Yeah.” Aulich didn’t sound entirely convinced, and Ronon didn’t blame her. Something buzzed past his face, and he lifted a hand to swat it away.

  “Let’s get your non-essentials unhooked before the plants start feeding here.”

  The uneasy truce was still holding. The Travelers had mostly retreated to Durant, waiting for Alabaster’s hive to leave orbit. A few of the younger crew hung around in the hatchway, watching the Wraith who had taken possession of the secondary building between the spots where their cruiser and scout had landed. Ford and his wife and son were down in the Vanir installation, waiting for Sheppard to figure out how they were all going to get back to Earth, since Atlantis still didn’t seem to have fixed its contamination problem. Guide had announced that the scout would be leaving in two hours to take passengers back to the hiveship, though the cruiser would remain to see that Sheppard kept his promise. And that meant, Rodney thought, that this was his first, last, and only chance to see if Jennifer was traveling aboard Guide’s ship. He hurried across the pavement, not stopping until the blade guarding the entrance hissed and lowered his staff.

  “I’m — well, you know who I am,” Rodney said. “I’m looking for Jennifer. Did she come with you?”

  The blade looked wary, but a new shape loomed behind him, resolved to Guide, eyebrows raised. “As it happened, she insisted, though I told her she could not influence the outcome. But, yes, she is here.”

  “I’d like to see her.”

  “Would she like to see you?”

  “You could always ask her,” Rodney snapped.

  Guide showed teeth. “Perhaps. Wait here.”

  “Oh, for — it’s cold out here!” Rodney wrapped his arms around his chest, scowling. “Can’t I at least get out of the wind?”

  “He said, wait here,” the blade answered, and Rodney sighed.

  “If I come down with pneumonia…”

  The blade ignored him, his eyes traveling to something beyond Rodney’s left shoulder. Rodney turned to see Dekaas walking toward them, a small bag slung over his shoulder. He looked tired, wary but hopeful.

  “Halt.” The blade lowered his weapon again, and Dekaas lifted both hands, showing them empty.

  “The Queen has permitted me to join the hive.”

  “I will consult,” the blade said, and took a step backward into the shadows.

  Rodney looked uncertainly at the other man, not knowing what to say. Dekaas seemed to take the silence for criticism, and his shoulders tightened.

  “And are you going to try to convince me to stay? When everyone now knows I served the Wraith, and no one is happy with this new treaty? That it would be better to stay with my own kind, even if I will never be trusted?”

  Rodney shook his head. “No, that wasn’t — I wasn’t even thinking that. I’ve lived with the Wraith myself, I know what it’s like. That it’s not all…” He stuck there, not knowing what word he actually meant, and settled for, “not all bad.”

  “You’re no worshipper,” Dekaas said.

  “No. Look, it’s a long and complicated story, but, short version, I was kidnapped and turned into a Wraith — I actually thought I was a Wraith — and —” Rodney stopped, shrugging, not wanting to remember everything he’d done when he’d believed he was Quicksilver. “Well. I thought I was one, anyway.”

  “And the Lanteans let you back.” Dekaas’s voice was flat.

  “It was different —” Rodney stopped, abruptly aware of the pit opening up in front of him. All he could say was that the Atlantis team knew him, that it hadn’t been exactly his fault or his choice, and none of that was actually going to make the other man feel any better. Dekaas’s mouth twisted as though he’d tasted something bitter, and Rodney turned in relief as a familiar voice called his name.

  “Rodney!” Jennifer came hurrying out of the shadows, her blonde hair pulled back in a long loose tail. “Guide said you were here.”

  “Yes, I just wanted to, you know, say hi. Before you left.” Rodney made himself stop. “This is Dekaas, by the way. He’s going to join you.”

  “I heard about that,” Jennifer said, with her ready smile. She held out her hand. “Welcome. Alabaster said I could borrow you to help with the retrovirus trials.”

  Dekaas blinked, but accepted the handshake. “Thank you.”

  “Guide said something about your speaking Wraith? Or I guess it’s more like being able to hear them?”

  “I am Tainted,” Dekaas said. Rodney thought he braced himself as he spoke. “I can’t always make myself heard, but as long as I’m addressed directly, I can understand them.”

  “Telepathy,” Rodney said aloud, and concentrated. *Can you hear me?*

  Dekaas whirled to face him, eyes wide. “You also —”

  “I told you, I was turned into a Wraith. Apparently this telepathy thing is lasting.”

  “That’s what Teyla called the Gift,” Jennifer said. “Being able to understand Wraith telepathy. Among the Athosians, it’s used to warn of impending attacks.”

  “Among my people,” Dekaas said, “it was a guarantee that you’d be part of the tribute. The Wraith came every three years, and took a hundred from among us all. The Tainted are the first to be chosen, only if there aren’t enough of us do they draw lots among the normal ones.”

  “But the Wraith didn’t eat you,” Rodney said.

  Jennifer glared at him, but Dekaas shrugged. “There was an old woman among the tribute, she taught three of us how to speak. When the Wraith came, their Master of Sciences Biological was curious about us. He kept me as a… pet, and taught me what I know.”

  “You know the Wraith equipment, then,” Jennifer said, determinedly cheerful. “That will be very helpful. As will your being able to act as a translator. I know I’m missing a great deal of nuance.”

  “I expect you will find him useful.” That was Guide, reappearing abruptly behind Jennifer. Rodney jumped, but Jennifer didn’t move, merely favoring him with a quick smile. “Seeker trained him well.”

  Dekaas grimaced at that, though Rodney wasn’t sure if it was because of the choice of verb or because of the mention of the long-dead cleverman. He remembered Daniel on Durant, probing heedlessly: was Seeker your friend? Captor, teacher, friend… It was a conundrum Rodney remembered all too well.

  “I’ll be very glad to work with you,” Jennifer said, to Dekaas. “I’m sure I’ll learn a great deal from you.”

  The medic managed a smile. “As will I.”

  “This way,” Guide said, showing teeth, and Dekaas followed him into the shadows.

  “Will he be all right?” Jennifer asked, lowering her voice. “I mean, he doesn’t have to come back if he doesn’t want to.”

  “He can’t exactly stay with the Travelers now,” Rodney said.

  “Well, no, but Colonel Sheppard — Teyla — surely they could
help him find someplace where he wouldn’t be outcast?”

  “From what Elizabeth said, the hive, Guide’s hive before his queen was killed, that was as close to home as Dekaas had after his people basically gave him to the Wraith.” Rodney paused, considering. “This is his choice. I — well, I can see how he’d do it.”

  Jennifer sighed, but her voice was determined. “And having someone on board who’s lived with the Wraith, who had a place in their culture — he can at least tell us more ways to make life possible on a hive.”

  “So you’re still staying?” Rodney hadn’t meant to say that, and felt the blood rising in his face.

  “You know I am.” Jennifer smiled. “There’s so much to be done.”

  Rodney nodded. “Well. Be careful.”

  “I will.” She reached out abruptly, drew him into a quick, fierce embrace. “I have to go now. But you be careful, too.”

  “I always am!” Rodney began, indignantly, but she had turned and was walking away into the shadows. “Mostly. About as much as you are.”

  She didn’t answer, of course. She was too far away, and moving further. He took a breath, and turned away himself, starting back toward the Vanir installation.

  The scout had returned to Just Fortune two hours ago, and the hive had made its way out of orbit. Teyla had watched from the co-pilot’s seat of the jumper as it made the leap to hyperspace, and now Durant was ready to lift, Lesko’s face framed in the communications screen.

  “You’ll attack if they try to stop us, right?” Lesko asked, and John heaved a sigh.

  “Yes, I will attack. But they’re not going to try to stop you.”

  “That’s what you say.” Lesko looked over his shoulder, and nodded to someone out of the camera’s sight. “All right. We’re ready to lift.”

  “Copy that,” John said, and the jumper’s weapons came to life. “Guide, Durant is ready to lift. We’ve gone hot as a precaution.”

  He didn’t say against what. Teyla smiled, and heard and felt the amusement in Guide’s answer.

  “Very well.”

  Teyla could hear Durant’s engines wailing as they rose toward full power, the sound only attenuated by the jumper’s hull. “What will we do next?”