Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen (Stargate Atlantis)

by Whitelaw, Sonny

  While all of that was gratifying, it also meant that he had endured these past hours for absolutely no reason. He could have been lying down in a nice warm bed someplace, sleeping. Preferably after a hot meal. Which reminded him that he wasn’t entirely certain when he’d last eaten, and that his blood sugar was unquestionably approaching dangerously low levels.

  While the engineers and warriors worked out a system of signals with the buglers, Rodney made himself moderately comfortable on the oily beach and reached into his pocket for a powerbar. He’d chewed through almost the entire thing before he realized that the children were clustered around him, staring at him. Okay, he couldn’t state with unqualified certainty that they were all staring, because half of them were in shadow, but he could feel their eyes boring into him—or maybe it was the powerbar.

  “What?” he demanded around a mouthful. “Am I the only one who thought to bring some food?”

  Their gazes remained fixed and a little hollow. Comprehension, when it finally came, hit him hard and turned the food to stone in his stomach. Not one of the children had an ounce of fat anywhere on them. Images of the squalid conditions in the Citadel, the bodies discarded like garbage, assaulted him.

  Rodney’s initial indignation about the Daleran culture had been largely theoretical. But that recollection, and the expression on the children’s faces, now drove home an unexpected insight. His own childhood, while less than ideal, had at least come with parents, food and a roof over his head. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly, without the annoyance of his earlier brush-off. “I mean, you’re kids—you should be in bed. Where are your parents?”

  The children traded tentative, sorrowful glances that sliced into his soul. He never should have asked. None of them had parents, or beds. Their village had surely been destroyed by now.

  “Who’s going to look after you?” A delayed realization had him backpedaling almost before the words were out of his mouth. “I’m not volunteering, mind you. I just…”

  “Peryn is a Gene,” ventured the little girl, the quiet one. “He has promised to look out for us.”

  Well, that was something, even if it was depressingly little. And it wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t hold off the Wraith. Every muscle in his body was begging to lie down on the beach and sleep, but Rodney pushed himself up and nodded toward Yann and one of the engineers. Together with the children and the buglers, they trudged back up the passageway.

  Even before they emerged from the tunnel, they could hear the sounds of utter pandemonium. A street battle had gotten underway in their absence. The incipient panic, which Rodney had been keeping just barely contained since landing this role in Survivor Dalera, instantly escalated to an entirely new level.

  The townspeople, along with many of the warriors who had been their enemy just twenty-four hours previously, were engaged in vicious hand-to-hand combat with the Wraith. How the hell had the creatures managed to get inside the Citadel? And why were so many people fighting? “Aren’t they supposed to have evacuated to higher ground?” he called to Yann. And right at that moment, he didn’t care much that his voice had cracked.

  “They have no choice!” Yann declared. “We have no choice. We fight and die, or we cower and die!” He ran into the throng, battleaxe in hand, apparently determined to slog it out until the bitter end. Noble of him, to be sure, but not exactly what Rodney had in mind.

  Swept up in the crowd, he dodged and ducked, weaving his way through axe-wielding men and warriors alike. Even a few women, their faces contorted with rage, were getting the drop on the Wraith swarming out of the transport near the West Bridge—a fact that answered his earlier question and chilled him to the core.

  Forgetting the weapon strapped to his hip, Rodney desperately tried to work his way against the crowd, but he was forced along with the throng. He stumbled and was elbowed aside, landing heavily against a set of steps. The pounding in his skull double-timed it, setting up a jarring cadence that seemed out of synch with the throbbing wound on his arm. Then he lifted his head and realized that the fall had actually managed to pull him out of the mass of humanity. Scrambling up a few more steps to see above the chaos, he turned—and saw inside the opening doors of the transport. While Wraith poured out, into the gingery light cast by the burning river, he caught a glimpse of a familiar blond head: Peryn. The boy’s face was bruised and bloodied, and he looked like a rag doll in the grip of a Wraith.

  The idea that he’d predicted the Wraith’s tactics so accurately was more than a little disturbing to Rodney. Ford and Teyla would have done everything in their power to protect Peryn, which made the boy’s capture a near-certain sign that they both were now dead.

  By the look of things, the Wraith’s fury at having been thwarted had overwhelmed their interest in taking prisoners. They were storming up and out of the transport in a bloody rampage. While most were intent on moving uphill in the direction of the now burned out Enclave, one group had veered toward West Bridge. Once in Wraith hands, the weir would likely be lowered, allowing the fire to spread upstream. This was no longer a culling; it was annihilation.

  Sickened by the carnage and frozen with despair, Rodney thought again of his teammates. Ford and Teyla had thrown themselves into defending these people and had paid the price for it. By now Major Sheppard probably was also dead, thanks to that quack healer. When the Marines came looking for them, the Wraith would obliterate the jumpers the moment they came through the ‘gate.

  Rodney was completely, utterly alone. Alone, and about to become Wraithmeat.

  It seemed so incredibly wasteful that he should die like this. There was so much he had yet to contribute to the galaxy, either this one or his own. All his work, all the half-finished theories, cut short by this insanity.

  Something grabbed his ankle, and pulled him off his feet. He looked up into the grotesque mask of a huge Wraith. Closing his eyes, he whispered, “I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

  Waking to a foul smell, Aiden battled the telltale after-effects of being hit with a Wraith stunner. Which was kind of weird. He hadn’t been expecting to wake at all, or at least not in any sort of condition that didn’t come with retirement benefits.

  “Lieutenant Ford.”

  Determinedly pushing aside the grating pins and needles sensation, Aiden looked around in the darkness. “Teyla? What happened? Where are we?” He tried to move, but realized he was wrapped in some sort of bandages, or netting maybe, which partially covered his mouth.

  A sense of revulsion stronger than anything he’d ever experienced hit him like a physical blow. He was wrapped in a Wraith cocoon.

  “Here, to your left. I believe we are still inside the inn of the village into which we transported.”

  Anger, all of it directed squarely at himself, quickly replaced Aiden’s loathing. “Where’s everyone else?” He tried moving his face up and down to dislodge the stuff.

  There was silence for a moment, then Teyla replied, “I believe that Peryn at least is still alive.”

  The sticky bonds were more elastic than he’d first thought, and he managed to get his nose and mouth clear. Maybe the Wraith that had wrapped him hadn’t been focused on the job. There was a lot going on, after all. “How do you know?” He tried shifting his hands around to tear through the binding. Not so easy. But then, he conceded that the Wraith had had at least ten thousand years to perfect their methods of storing food supplies.

  “I was not rendered entirely unconscious by their stunners.”

  Possibly it was the darkness, or his own sense of failure in carrying out what should have been a straightforward reconnaissance mission, but Aiden was sure that he could hear self-recrimination in Teyla’s voice. McKay’s parting shot now hit him, and he said, “You think they used Peryn to transport into the Citadel?” So why were he and Teyla still in one piece? Twisting his hands around, he was determined to get free. No way was he letting his mission turn into a complete snafu.

  “Yes, but not immediately.
I am not entirely certain of what occurred, but I sensed…confusion. I believe that the Wraith were uncertain which of us was responsible for operating the transport.”

  “So they kept us alive just in case.” The residual stickiness that had plagued Aiden’s senses was clearing, and he could make out a pallid shape in the direction of Teyla’s voice. She was only a few feet away. “What about—?” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The stark light cast by the overhead planets shone through the open windows of the inn. He spotted four desiccated bodies, slumped against one wall. Their chest armor had been ripped off and tossed in a separate pile—which Teyla, or the cocooned shape of Teyla, was currently up against.

  Rocking back and forth in an attempt to loosen the rubbery netting, Aiden bumped into her.

  “Do not waste your energy, Lieutenant. You will not escape the bindings so easily.”

  “Well, I’m not just going to lie here and wait for more Wraith to turn up,” he retorted. “Unless you can pull another one of those Houdini tricks of yours.”

  “If you will hold still,” she said with a touch of exasperation, “I have located a shard of metal. But I can only grasp it with my mouth.”

  Several minutes passed while he felt Teyla squirming beside him, and then abruptly, he felt a hole in the netting large enough to stick his hand through. That gave him sufficient leverage to tear away more of the binding until he could reach his knife and cut away the rest.

  Once Teyla was free, Aiden searched the inn for their packs and weapons. He barely glanced at the dead men on the floor, but his teammate seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in them. Although two of them were the warriors who had stuck with Teyla from the start, it wasn’t like the Athosian to be morbid, so he said, “It’s not your fault that they’re dead. It could just as easily have been you and me lying there.”

  “That is what disturbs me. Why did they let us live, and instead feed on these men?”

  “You said it yourself.” Aiden found his P-90 and checked the weapon. He’d fired several rounds into the nearest Wraith before being hit with the stunner. “They must have thought that we would be more useful to them alive, at least for now. Major Sheppard said that when he was held captive by the Wraith, they tried to pull something from his mind.”

  Teyla rounded on her heel and stared at him. “What did you say?”

  Not sure what button he’d just pressed, Aiden shrugged. “Some sort of interrogation, I guess. Although I can’t say I believe in the mind reading thing, that queen or caretaker or whatever she was sure did something to the Major on the hive ship. The guys who captured us were probably ordered to keep us on ice until someone up the chain of command could get here.”

  “And leave us unguarded?”

  “Hey, I’m not the Wraith expert around here. That’s your department.” He glanced through the window and up at the sky. “All I do know is that we’ve got about six hours until dawn. And since we’re not going to be able to get back into the Citadel without Peryn, I say we carry out the original mission, and then find some other way back inside.”

  Teyla’s eyes dropped. “Perhaps not.”

  Following the direction of her gaze, Aiden swore. Outside, dozens, maybe hundreds of Wraith were making a beeline for the inn. “Is there a back way out of this place?” Before he’d even gotten the words out of his mouth, a light from behind signaled the returning transport.

  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Outside, the crunch of boots grew louder. Beside him, Teyla lifted her P-90 and readied her aim at the opening transport doors. This time, he doubted that the Wraith would bother to gift-wrap them before feeding.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Wraith’s head rolled off its shoulders. Rodney blinked, staring in fascination. Then the torso collapsed on him and something gushed out over his face and eyes. Unable to cry out in revulsion, simply because the sheer weight of the thing had driven all the air from his lungs, he discovered a reserve of strength that he hadn’t believed possible and shoved the creature off himself.

  “Oh…God!” The stench of whatever passed for blood was, as incredible as it seemed, actually worse than anything he had so far encountered.

  Before he could even begin to get his bearings, his shoulder was more or less wrenched from its socket by someone hauling him further up the stairs. Multiple someones, more accurately. Not content with extending the length of his arm by several inches, a bunch of other hands began pushing at his legs, urging him to climb higher and yelling something that sounded like, “This way!”

  Suddenly he found himself standing on a balcony or porch, surrounded by the children, Yann, and the engineer who had returned with them. Everyone was jabbering at once, asking him inane questions about what they could do next.

  How the hell was he supposed to know? While they stood there, another gang of Wraith poured up and out of the transport. Most were swarming uphill; however, a group broke off and headed around the fountain in the center of the square and toward the bridge. The Dalerans had somehow managed to defend the entrance to the bridge, but at this rate, it was only a matter of time before they were overrun.

  The blood from the felled Wraith dripped into Rodney’s eyes. Yelling in frustration and disgust, he rubbed the heels of his hands across his face, trying to wipe the stuff away. “Precisely how am I supposed to magically ascertain what to do when I can’t even see? Hasn’t anyone got any water in this place?”

  A bubble of stunned silence seemed to encapsulate the group. Then the little girl tugged at his shirt. He looked down at her and snapped, “What?”

  “The wells are all dry. Now there is only blackwater.”

  And that, combined with the children’s expressions, their trust and faith in him, suddenly pulled Rodney from his funk. They needed him; everyone needed him. Maybe Ford and Teyla were dead, but the Major might only have a headache. And what about Atlantis? Zelenka simply wasn’t capable of looking after things as well as Rodney. Okay, so maybe Zelenka was capable, but it would give the Czech scientist entirely too much satisfaction to know that Rodney had been unable to solve what amounted to a relatively straightforward problem. He peered at the transport. “Am I imagining things, or is that set slightly downhill from the square?”

  “The transport was built as such so that barrels and carts could readily be moved from the bridge and inside.”

  “Of course it was.” His mind already taking two steps at a time, Rodney turned to the engineer. “Where’s the mechanism that controls the water supply to that fountain?”

  “There, in the pump-house by the bridge.” The man pointed to a huge metal door set in the wall on the far side of the square, directly opposite the transport. “All major water pumps are located by the channels.”

  Where else would you have a water pump? Perfect. Just perfect. All they had to do was negotiate a path through a horde of incoming Wraith hell-bent on capturing the bridge. No problem. Swallowing back his fear, he began to ask if there was another way to the pump-house, but Yann had already divined his intention. “You mean to burn the transport!”

  “Yes, of course, but destroying one transport would only force the Wraith to divert their invasion to elsewhere in the Citadel. The idea is to get the oil into the transport before igniting it. Which means waiting until the doors open…”His words trailed off as the implications of that planned action hit home. The Wraith had control of the transports only because they had Peryn. Rescuing the kid was out of the question; there was no way anyone, including the indomitable and surprisingly quickwitted Major, could pull that off. In order to save the Citadel, they—he—would have to incinerate the boy along with the arriving Wraith.

  Rodney’s throat tightened and his hands knotted into involuntary fists. The children were staring at him, as if they could read his thoughts. He wanted to say something, to explain that this was just how it had to be, but the engineer had turned to run down the steps.

  “There is a passage beneath us,” the man said over his
shoulder, his eyes taking in Yann.

  More tunnels. Wonderful. But at least this one was short and almost tall enough for Rodney to stand without damaging yet more vertebrae.

  On the way, they stopped at a primitive pipe system, and the engineer turned a series of cocks and handles. “This will prevent the blackwater that is pumped into the fountain from draining through the outlets. Instead, it will quickly overflow onto the square.”

  “And down toward the transport? You’re sure about that?” Rodney demanded.

  Bobbing his head as he trotted along, the engineer replied, “It has nowhere else to flow, except perhaps the storage houses behind.”

  “Which contain what exactly? The last thing we need is a Pyrrhic victory.”

  “Blackpowder,” Yann replied.

  “Oh, well, that’s just great!” Rodney stumbled to a halt. “You didn’t think to mention that sooner?” Saved from the Wraith only to have their entire civilization destroyed by the resulting firestorm. Then again—“How much blackpowder?”

  “Only a few barrels. And all of the nearby structures are stone,” Yann said, urging Rodney to keep moving. “It is one law that no one disobeys, for all understand the damage just one measure of blackpowder can do.”

  The tunnel abruptly opened out into a room that, while large, was crammed with hand-operated machinery. Rodney could tell at a glance what the oversized gears, chains and pulleys controlled. “The portcullis and weir,” the engineer provided unnecessarily, leading them up a set of steps to ground level.

  Which naturally made the building a prime target. Once the portcullis was open, the Wraith had free entry into the Citadel. Was it his imagination, or were those Wraith claws he could hear pounding at the gates?