STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air

by James Swallow

  Scott scuffed a rime of the white dust off his boot. “You saying we can use this sand to fix the scrubbers?”

  “That would be convenient,” noted Eli.

  Palmer shook her head. “No.”

  “So, how is it good?” Scott frowned. What was it with science types? Why couldn’t they just give a straight, to-the-point answer?

  “It’s a clear indication that the components we need may exist nearby,” Rush explained.

  Palmer nodded, her eyes fixed on the beaker. “For the sake of portability and efficiency, I’m hoping to find high concentration granular limestone. Hopefully, the closer we get to the source, the greater the concentration of calcium oxide in the sand will be.”

  Scott drew his binoculars, wondering if he would know ‘high concentration granular limestone’ if he actually saw it.

  “We are looking for the dried lake bed or salt water body all this sand came from,” Palmer continued.

  Eli gave an isn’t-it-obvious? shrug. “It’s a desert,”

  “Lime is formed mostly from the remains of marine organisms,” said Palmer.

  That caught Scott’s attention. “You’re saying there was life here?”

  “Possibly,” said Rush. “At some point in the distant past. Not likely anything we’ve seen before.”

  Nearby, Franklin had found what he needed and the gate was starting to spin, the chevrons glowing as the glyphs flashed on.

  Palmer was still talking, warming to her subject matter. “The water may be gone now, but this desert was formed by water evaporating slowly on a playa floor, causing gypsum to be deposited in a fine crystalline form called selenite.”

  “Every day’s a school day,” muttered Scott and he started forward, walking up the incline of a tall dune.

  “Where are you going?” called Eli.

  He didn’t look back. “Higher ground.” He heard the heavy trudge of combat boots behind him and knew that Greer was following on.

  The gate continued to dial, spinning clockwise and then anticlockwise, as the return address back to the Destiny locked in one symbol at a time. Eli looked away and back to Palmer, who took the reagent bottle offered by Rush and poured a few drops of a red liquid into the beaker containing her cooked solution of muddy white sand. She swirled it gently, like a wine expert prior to taking a sip. “What’s supposed to happen?” he asked.

  “If this sand is high enough in calcite concentration, the solution would absorb the acid I just added,” said Palmer.

  “Right.” Eli had flunked chemistry; largely because of an incident involving a volatile formula he had pulled off the internet.

  “The liquid would turn clear,” added Rush.

  The mixture remained a grimy crimson. “It’s not,” Eli said, attempting to be helpful.

  With a sudden peal of sound the Stargate opened and all of them glanced up to see the event horizon solidify. Franklin waved the remote. “We’re good,” he said.

  Eli heard Scott’s voice over the radio channel and looked up to find the lieutenant and Sergeant Greer standing atop the crest of a tall dune; Scott’s dark uniform stood out like a blot of ink against the ivory-colored sands. “This is Scott,” he was saying. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing useful in the immediate vicinity of the gate.”

  Colonel Young answered him. “You have just under twelve hours, Lieutenant.

  Make them count.”

  “We’re moving out.” Eli saw Scott give a nod, and then cast a long look around. Eli stood up and followed Scott’s gaze. In every direction, off toward the distant horizon as far as the eye could see, the endless desert ranged away from them. “Too bad we can’t just use this sand,” said the lieutenant. “There certainly is enough of it.”

  The colonel moved through the corridors with difficulty, his legs still refusing to work the way they should, slowing him down, making every step a painful one. Much to his chagrin, he had accepted T.J.’s suggestion that he use a support, and she’d had Airman Becker cobble together a makeshift crutch for his use. He hated using it — of all the times, now was not a moment to be seen to be weak, not when strong leadership was needed — but it was either that or risk falling on his backside.

  He turned the corner of a junction and hesitated, looking this way and that. The interiors of the Destiny had the same modular characteristics of a lot of Ancient technological design, but the downside was that if everything looked the same, it would be easy to get turned around. Looking right, he spotted a figure sitting on the floor, leaning up against one of the walls. “James?”

  The lieutenant looked up at him, as if she was just noticing him for the first time. “Yes sir,” she replied in a sullen, distant voice. Young was never a hard-ass about saluting, protocol and all that stuff, not when it wasn’t important, but he sensed the faint, morose insolence lurking under her words.

  “I’m looking for Chloe Armstrong,” he told her. “You know where she is?”

  James gestured to a closed hatch a short distance down the corridor. “She’s still in there. Hasn’t come out.”

  He took a step toward Chloe’s quarters and paused, wondering what he was about to walk in on. He had no idea how the girl was dealing with her father’s death. “How is she?”

  The response he got from James wasn’t the one he expected. “How is she?” echoed the woman, with building anger. “How about you ask me how I am?”

  Young gave her a level look. They were all under a lot of stress right now and he was willing to give Vanessa a little latitude, but there were limits. “She’s a civilian. You’re trained for this, Lieutenant.” James grimaced, and he kept on before she could speak again. “She just watched her father die.”

  James glared at him. “My father may as well be dead to me too, ’cause I’m stuck in some galaxy only God knows about…”

  He frowned. “Yeah, okay, look—”

  She kept talking. “I was supposed to go back to Iraq again, but they said Icarus was a better opportunity.” Her surly manner evaporated, turning to despair. “We’re all gonna die out here…”

  “Hey,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to hear any more of that talk. We’re going to work this out.”

  James gave him a weak, fake smile. “I’m just telling you how I am, Colonel.” She stood up. “Since you asked.” Before he could say any more, the lieutenant walked off down the corridor.

  Young let her go; he’d have to deal with Vanessa James later, and anyone else whose manner was slipping down the road to despondency, before low morale became a problem for all of them. He hobbled to Chloe’s hatch and knocked on it.

  She didn’t respond, and after a count of two, he entered.

  The colonel found her perched on the edge of one of the beds in the sleeping alcove. She spoke without looking at him, and her voice was flat, cried out and exhausted. “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “No, you’re not,” he replied. “And neither am I. But we’re all still alive because of what he did for us.”

  “For what it’s worth—” Chloe began.

  “It’s worth a lot.” Young insisted. “And as long as we’re still here I promise you that—”

  She turned to him. “Colonel, I’ve edited enough of my father’s speeches to know what you’re going to say.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t have a clue what I was going to say, because I don’t.” He sighed. “I’m figuring this out as I go.” After a moment, he went on. “I brought along an Ancient device from Icarus when we escaped. Communications stones. They’ll allow us to talk to people back home.”

  Chloe gave a nod. “I know what they are.”

  “Good.” He wondered how much of the Stargate program the senator had allowed his daughter to become privy to; but then she had been his executive assistant. Probably has a higher security clearance than me. “Well, I’m about to use one of them to report to my superiors on Earth and tell them our situation.” He paused, framing his words. “I thought you might want to—”


  She nodded again. “I want to tell her myself,”

  “All right,” he said. “Come with me. We’ve set up a chamber as a communications room.”

  On the U.S.S. Hammond’s return to Earth, everyone who had been involved in the defense of and then retreat from Icarus Base had been subjected to a thorough and exacting debrief, designed to garner as much information as possible from the officers and men for the intelligence analysts to work with. For most people, that left them feeling wrung out and ready to stand down, but David Telford had never really been the kind to let that sort of thing bother him. From his earliest days in flight school, through his service in the regular Air Force and then on to the SGC, Telford had always placed the mission ahead of everything.

  Some people thought he was a hard-charger, that he was cocky. He didn’t give a damn what ‘some people’ thought. He did his job, and did it well. If there were those who didn’t like his manner, his directness, his tenacity, that was fine; because the mission was more important than them, as well.

  He sat at rest in the chair before a bench of monitoring equipment, one hand resting on a whorled black stone. He had his eyes shut, but he could hear the soft click and whirr of the scanning devices, and the breathing of the two Marines standing guard across the room from him, by the door.

  Telford heard the door open, and careful footsteps as someone entered. A woman, he guessed by the lightness of the tread and the sound of the shoes, a civilian.

  “Is he asleep?” said a quiet voice.

  He smiled slightly. “I’m meditating.” Telford opened his eyes and found Doctor Mehta studying him. He’d met the attractive young Indian woman before in passing; she was a sociologist with the SGC’s cultural analysis department, and now she’d been hastily brought in on short notice to provide a psychological viewpoint on the situation with the Icarus survivors. It was a unique circumstance the escapees found themselves in; if what Telford had been told was right, they were so far from Earth that it could take centuries for them to return home, even at hyperspatial velocities, but at the same time they were able to communicate instantaneously.

  “You’ve been sitting here since Rush made contact,” said Mehta. “Let somebody else take a shift.”

  He shook his head. While he didn’t much like the idea of his body becoming the temporary puppet of one Nicholas Rush, should the scientist initiate communication again, Telford wanted to be the first person to go back the other way, to see where the survivors were and what had happened to them. More than that, even if it had to be through the flesh of someone else, he wanted to see what lay beyond the ninth chevron — and what it was he’d lost the chance to explore. “I’m not leaving this chair,” he told her. “I spent the last six months on this project, and I’ll be damned if I will—”

  He felt a sudden shudder run through his body.

  Telford’s eyes closed as though he was about to faint, but then he opened them again widely, looking around with an expression of surprise. Mehta had the impression of a man who looked as if he had just woken up from a deep sleep. “Colonel?”

  “Doctor Mehta?”

  “Yes sir. What’s wrong?”

  Telford looked down at his hands, trying them out, moving his fingers. “This is strange…” He stared at the monitor showing the live feed from the room’s camera.

  There was something in the tonality of his voice and the shift in his body language that made it immediately clear something had changed; the closest thing she had seen to it was in footage of sufferers of dissociative identity disorder. “Dr. Rush, is that you?”

  That question seemed to galvanize Telford’s new ‘passenger’ and he shot her a look, “No. It’s Colonel Young. And I need you to put me in a room with General O’Neill.”

  “All right,” she began, nodding to one of the guards.

  “Doctor,” said Young/Telford. “I’m going to need you too.”

  “Sir!” Tamara rushed forward to gather up Young from where he had fallen on the deck. “Sir, I told you not to try to get up!” One second the man had been fingering one of those weird alien stones, the next he was trying to walk as if he had no wounds at all.

  The colonel was lying on the floor, hissing in pain. “I’m not Colonel Young!” he snapped angrily. “The link worked. I’m Telford!”

  “Right…” Tamara thought about that for a second, and then dismissed the questions churning in her mind. Telford, not Young. Got it. If this sort of thing was going to be happening a lot, she mused, it would take some getting used to.

  “What did he do to himself?” Telford hissed, through clenched teeth.

  “You… I mean he’s got cracked ribs, more bruises than I can count and a concussion that resulted in neurapraxia…”

  “That’s just great…” he hissed, biting out the words. With effort, the man turned himself over and sat heavily on the floor, sweating and pale with pain and effort. “I need to get up. Can’t waste time, I have to use every second I’m here, you understand, Lieutenant?”

  Tamara nodded. Although she was still looking at Everett Young, Telford’s manner and persona came through strongly. She turned. Chloe Armstrong had come in with the colonel, just before the ‘link’ had occurred. “Chloe, can you help me?” Then T.J. realized that she too was holding one of the smooth black stones. “Is that still you in there?” she added.

  “I’m Doctor Mehta,” came the reply. Chloe’s face wore a different expression; gone was all her fear and sadness; now she seemed amazed by her surroundings.

  A real doctor? Tamara wondered, hoping this person’s qualifications included medicine. “Okay,” she said, “Help me get him on his feet.”

  “General,” said Young, extending his hand as his commander entered the room. “It’s good to see you, sir.”

  O’Neill gave him an odd look, then took the hand and shook it. “Yeah, you too, Colonel. Well, not exactly see you…” He trailed off. “You know what I mean.”

  He nodded to the woman standing beside him. “Doctor Mehta kindly offered to allow Miss Armstrong the use of her…self.”

  The general immediately picked up on the inference in Young’s words. “The senator?”

  “I’m afraid he didn’t make it, sir,” said Young. “The fact is, I wouldn’t be here talking to you if not for him. He gave his life to give the rest of us a fighting chance to survive.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” O’Neill nodded gravely, and glanced at Chloe. “I had some of my favorite arguments with your father.”

  Chloe’s slight smile appeared on Mehta’s face. “Are you saying you won some?”

  The general cocked his head. “That all depends on who you ask.” He turned and spoke to a junior officer standing out in the corridor. “Major Green? Arrange a car for Miss Armstrong.”

  “Yes sir,” said the major, reaching for an intercom phone.

  “He’ll escort you to see your mother, bring you back here when you’re ready.” O’Neill paused. “Please give her my condolences.”

  “Thank you, General,” said Chloe. Young threw her a nod, and she left.

  When the two of them were alone, O’Neill asked the question that Young knew was coming. “So… How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad,” he replied.

  “You should know we’ve already had an emergency briefing about all this,” said the general. “Strom and the rest of the IOA are afraid that the attack on Icarus was just the opening shot in something bigger. They think those Lucian Alliance creeps might be making a move on us.”

  “Is that likely?”

  O’Neill shrugged. “A day ago I would have said no way, but right now…” He paused. “The Daedalus, the Odyssey, Sun Tzu and Apollo are all on high alert. I’ve got people in the field trying to figure out if there’s more coming, or if this was just an attack of opportunity.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Jackson’s out with Vala chasing up her former contacts in the Alliance. Mitchell and Teal’c are sharing what inte
l we have with the Free Jaffa Nation. In the meantime, Carter’s on station at the moon base with the Hammond while we patch it up. I know she’s already talked to McKay and his people about ideas for getting you all back, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  Young’s heart sank. “Sir, I don’t know what Rush told you, but we may not have much time left.”

  Disappointment flashed on the other man’s face. “Find a way.”

  “The ship is very old,” Young insisted, “It’s falling apart.”

  “Then repair it.”

  “We’re trying,” he said. “But even if we can get life support working, there’s not much food and water—”

  “Then go get some,” the general retorted.

  “We’re not supposed to be there!” Young snapped, his irritation flaring. He paused before he spoke again. “Sir, these are the wrong people in the wrong place, and as a group they are just not qualified.”

  O’Neill made a face. “Please, I wasn’t qualified to lead the first team through the Stargate…”

  “Yes sir,” Young began, trying to reinforce his point. “But I—”

  The general kept talking. “I’m not really qualified for this job, either,” he admitted. O’Neill gave him a hard look. “In the past dozen years or so, we’ve sent hundreds of teams through that thing, and let me tell you, in the grand scheme of things, none of us are qualified.” He seemed weary for a moment. “You don’t give up. That’s the one rule that works out there.”

  Young nodded. “I never have. We’re doing everything we can.” He looked away, the grim truth settling in on him. “I’m just saying what it is. It may come to a point very soon where everyone on board should be given a chance to say goodbye…before it’s too late.”

  The general was silent for a moment. “After we’re done here… I can arrange a car for you, too, if you like.”