STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air

by James Swallow

  The scientist rolled his eyes and went back to bandaging Franklin’s wound.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Matthew Scott walked on.

  It had become a mechanical, mindless process, one foot in front of the other, over and over, trudging across the ivory sandscape. As he struggled to sustain his consciousness, it became a contest of sheer applied will. His training, his stamina, his spirit, any combination of all these things, they were the force keeping his feet moving, long past the point where his body should have failed.

  And the heat; the punishing, endless heat tore into Scott through his sweat-soaked uniform. Dimly, he could feel it killing him by inches.

  At the edges of his vision there were blurs, ghostly shapes that could have been heat-haze mirages or specks of dirt caught in his eyes. He sensed a strange pressure in the back of his skull and something pulled him, compelled him to turn around. He did so, stumbling and righting himself before he could fall.

  There was no shock this time. It didn’t seem to register with Scott that what he was seeing was wrong, that it was utterly impossible. The distances of time and space made it so. He was here; he could not be there, where ever there was.

  Father George was pacing him, step for step. He saw how the priest’s careful tread was placing him in the boot prints Scott was leaving behind, the winding snake of his route crossing over the ridges of the white dunes.

  He blinked, looked away. No. He wasn’t there. It was an illusion, just like seeing the old man’s face beneath the sand. It was his mind, starved of water, the dehydration attacking his reason.

  Scott’s gaze rose from the sands around his feet to see ahead of him. On the next rise over, the swirling vortex of dust glittered as it caught the hard sunlight; then it was gone again and Scott could not be certain that it was ever actually there. He shook his head hard, sweat flicking away from his brow, and blinked.

  He felt the presence again, heard the crunch of the mineral sand beneath the soles of sensible black church shoes. Father George was at his side now, still matching him step for step, walking in parallel. He looked calm and collected, as if he were out for a walk on some cool summer evening, utterly out of place in this searing furnace of a landscape.

  Scott halted and looked at the man. He seemed solid, tangible. The priest walked on a few steps, then seemed to notice he was going on alone. He stopped and gave Scott a paternal smile.

  Then he spoke. “You must keep going, my boy.” His voice was rich and resonant. “Don’t give up.”

  The emotion that came to him first was an ugly one, a rise of sullen frustration. “I don’t need you to tell me that,” he croaked. Scott fumbled for his canteen and found it, working off the sand-caked cap and raising it to his lips. He found only a little water in there, and savored a mouthful of it. The priest’s smile remained, and he mirrored Scott’s actions, reaching into the pocket of his jacket to produce a silver hip flask. He raised it in a wry gesture, like a toast, and took a long pull. Scott thought he could detect the ghost of a scent on the wind; the peaty odor of strong whiskey.

  “I’m not going to let anyone else down the way I let you down,” he husked, looking away from the figure. “You really don’t have to follow me around to remind me.”

  With a sigh of effort, Scott began walking again, and moved on toward the distant ridgeline, past the priest, who favored him with a sad smile.

  He spoke again as Scott left him behind. “He has his plan for all of us.”

  The transition ended, Young’s sight of the inside of the comms lab in the Homeworld Command facility blinking away, and darkness sweeping in. He remembered the last thing he had felt; Jack O’Neill shaking his hand, the concerned look in the general’s eyes; then the pain came back, washing slowly over him like a tide of needles, and he hissed, opening his eyes.

  “Colonel Telford?” Tamara Johansen was by his side, worry clear on her face.

  “Young,” he corrected. “It’s me, T.J.” He blinked. Back again, he thought. He took a breath of air and tasted the stale, coppery flavor of it; the CO2 problem hadn’t been solved while he was gone, then. Young looked around, seeing the now-familiar steely walls of a Destiny crew cabin.

  “Glad to have you back, sir,” said Tamara. She sounded like she meant it.

  He stretched and felt an odd lethargy in his limbs, a tiredness that dragged on him like a heavy weight. “Why do feel like I’ve been drugged?”

  “It was for your own good, sir,” said the medic.

  A walkie on a low table near the bed gave a crackle. “We have an incoming wormhole.” He recognized Brody’s voice.

  “Something’s up,” he began, trying to lift himself. A sudden spasm of pain shot through him and he winced. “Son of a … What the hell was Telford doing?”

  Tamara frowned. “He didn’t exactly drive easy, sir.”

  “Right…” Young let the lieutenant help him to his feet. “Next time I’ll return the favor… Smoke a box of cigars. Get him a tattoo, maybe…” He looked around. “Where’s Chloe?”

  “She, uh, came back some time before you did, sir. She looked…scared.”

  “Yeah,” said Young quietly. “There’s a lot of that going around.” He grabbed the radio and started walking.

  Camile had walked as far as she dared to go through the corridors of the Destiny, and now she was coming back full circle, mentally plotting out the map of the ‘local’ area around the gate room. Most people had retreated to the crew quarters, shut themselves in and tried to find ways to make the passing of the time seem painless. Doctor Boone had apparently come across a deck of cards and a muted game was under way in one of the storage rooms; other people were sleeping to conserve what little air remained, some writing notes to their loved ones even though it was unlikely they would ever be read.

  Wray wondered if she should be doing the same; but she had never been one to wait for things to happen. Something in her knew that she would face her end the same way she faced her life; on her feet, without apology.

  She heard noises coming from the gate room, the low rumbling of the Stargate as it turned about itself. Her pace quickened; it could only mean the party sent down to the planet were coming back, and hopefully, they had their salvation with them. Turning the corner she came across Vanessa James, who stood at indolent rest outside the chamber.

  “Lieutenant,” she said, by way of greeting.

  “Camile,” came the reply.

  She paused on the threshold. The woman was clearly there to stand guard, but Wray couldn’t be certain if that meant the chamber was now off-limits. “Is there any word yet?”

  James shook her head. “No.”

  “People want to know what’s going on,” she continued.

  The woman looked away. “I don’t know.” She gestured at the gate room. “Go see for yourself.”

  Wray took a step, then halted. James’s brooding manner was not characteristic of the young woman, not by a long shot; but then a crisis such as the one they were going through affected different people in different ways. “How are you holding up?” she asked. “You okay?”

  The response was flat. “I’m fine.”

  “You know you can talk to me, right?”

  That got her a nod, and Wray understood that was all James would offer for the moment. “Thanks,” said the lieutenant, her gaze drifting away.

  She went on into the gate room, just in time to see the wormhole form with a grumbling thunder of noise. Wray stood back from where Adam Brody and Sergeant Riley stood working the control console.

  With a shudder of silver light, two figures stumbled through the Stargate and dropped to the deck a few steps in. It was Doctor Rush, and propped on his shoulder Wray saw Jeremy Franklin, groggy and marked with blood. She gasped; had they encountered something hostile on the desert world? “Is he all right?”

  “What happened?” said Brody.

  Rush lowered Franklin to the floor. “Greer shot him,” explained the scientist. “I need
water,” he went on.

  .Riley handed him his canteen, clearly expecting him to give it to the injured man, but instead Rush tore open the cap and drank it all in a single go.

  “That was my ration for the day….” said the sergeant, clearly aggrieved. Rush waved him away with a noncommittal nod, which seemed to be his equivalent of a thank you.

  Wray stepped aside as Colonel Young arrived with Lieutenant Johansen. “What’s going on?” said the colonel, raising his voice to be heard over the screech of the dissipating wormhole.

  Rush gave a dry chuckle. Wray could see his face was flushed with sunburn and the effects of dehydration. “We’ve all had a lovely day at the beach. How about you?”

  Young shot him an acid glare and beckoned Wray forward. “Camile. Help us.”

  “We need to move him,” said Tamara, indicating Franklin. “He’s losing a lot of blood.”

  Wray swallowed hard and nodded, taking the unconscious man’s shoulders, while Brody and Tamara lifted from his legs.

  The coppery tang of blood reached her nostrils, and she did her best to ignore it.

  Matthew Scott walked on.

  Slower now. Each step a leaden effort. Each footfall a mountain climbed. He was fading, becoming a faint copy of himself, losing breath and energy and life. The white sands and the blazing sun were burning him, bleaching all color from him.

  His boot went down awkwardly against a drift of sand and he stumbled. Gravity pulled him to his knees and he swayed, part of him unaware of the fall, the automatic part of his brain still trying to walk on and on, running him like a robot made of meat and bone.

  Then he fell, all the way, into the sand. It came up to meet him, threatened to smother him. Scott took a shuddering breath and looked up. There was something out there, a shape he knew, a symbol, a man. Both and neither. He blinked away the blurs and saw the shadow of a figure hanging from a wooden cross.

  He looked away and suddenly a rise of old memory came to him, strong and fluid. Desperate for even a moment’s respite from the heat, he let himself sink into it.

  The church.

  It was always the church. Everything that went wrong in his life inevitably ended up back there. He was only a youth. Sixteen. By the span of years, maybe not so long ago, but in terms of experience, in terms of maturity…it seemed like a lifetime.

  The empty pews all around him, the cool, open space of the nave, the arched roof over his head. Light, colored by stained glass, drifting in over him. At his back, a man’s breath. A hand reaching for his shoulder, offering him support. His throat thick with emotion, his fingers trembling. A face still wet with tears.

  Then the admission. The damning truth from his own lips.

  “I failed,” he says. His voice is small and faint, but it carries across the silent reaches of the chapel. He looks up and sees Father George. The priest’s face shows nothing but compassion.

  “He has his plan for all of us.”

  But that’s wasn’t answer enough. Not enough for him. He felt like his young life was ending, breaking apart piece by piece. And in a way, it did end.

  “I have sinned, Father. I failed you. I failed myself.” He nods towards the altar, and beyond, the figure up upon the cross. “I failed him.”

  Then the words. “We have Redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.”

  Redemption. The word means many things. Deliverance. Salvation.

  Rescue.

  Only three remained here now; an entire world, and on it only three lives as human beings might reckon them. Each of them waiting for an ending, each moving toward it on their own way.

  Scott’s head lolled forward and consciousness left him, his body dropping into the grip of it, lost. He lay there in the ashen sands, fallen, clinging to the edge of his life, each breath laboring from his lungs, each a tick of the clock one moment nearer death, for his life and the lives of everyone aboard the Destiny.

  Out beyond him, unseen, past the drift where he had collapsed, the sand dunes fell away. The landscape there became flat and featureless, and glittering in the sunlight, the vast plain of a bone-dry lake bed that had not known the touch of water upon it for thousands and thousands of years.

  Only three remained here.

  Greer marched, ignoring the cries of his body, the aches and the pain and the ever-present drag from his limbs, the need to stop, stop and fall. He denied them all, kept on, kept on marching. Like a soldier. Like a machine. Standing tall. A man on fire.

  That was who he was, this was what he did. Ronald Greer was a Marine, and he was of the few, the proud, the always faithful. He would not allow himself to falter. This was not an option. The life he had left, and the new life the Corps had given him, all these things had forged a will in Greer like tempered steel. Even now, out here in a wilderness so far from home his mind got lost trying to grasp it, he was still that man. And he would leave no one behind.

  As he marched, he carried a voice with him, crackling through the air. “Curtis, Palmer, this is Eli, if you can hear me, come in, over.”

  Only three.

  Eli Wallace stood beneath the glare of the sun, looking into the ever-changing, shifting silver of the gateway. On the other side of that shimmering portal, another world like this one, alien to everything he had ever known. Somewhere, through that gateway, other lives had been cast like thrown stones.

  “Curtis … Palmer… please respond.” He said their names into the radio, repeating them over and over; and with a slow chill that crept through his bones in defiance of the crippling heat, he wondered if his words were now just a eulogy. They had taken a risk against all odds and he had let them do it. If they were dead, did he share in that? Eli stared at the radio, willing it to respond to him, waiting for the sound of a voice.

  Silence answered him, and he sighed, fighting down the fear that he would follow them, that all of them would follow, soon enough.

  With howl of energy, the pool of silver evaporated, and the Stargate became a inert ring of gray metal once more.

  Young stood back across the room and gave Tamara space to work. Franklin lay on one of the crew beds, his face sweaty and pale. The colonel could hear him moaning softly in the depths of a fever.

  “Greer’s shot is still in there,” said the lieutenant. “I have to get that bullet out, and soon.”

  “Then do it,” he ordered.

  Tamara hesitated. “I’m going to use a lot of the morphine I have left.”

  “Whatever you have to do,” said Young. “Get to work.”

  She gave him a tight nod and began sorting out equipment from her medical kit. Young studied Franklin for a moment. Part of him wondered if Tamara’s effort would actually be worth anything; if Scott didn’t get back with the minerals they needed, it wouldn’t matter if Franklin came through or not. He’d die either way, along with the rest of them.

  Young shook his head slightly, banishing the callous notion. He couldn’t afford to let himself start thinking that way. He couldn’t look at human beings and see only numbers, pluses and minuses on some great, abstract scale. The colonel turned away and found Rush and Wray standing by the door.

  Wray was attempting to interrogate Rush, while the doctor probed gently at his sunburned skin, looking at his hands. “Your man didn’t have to shoot him,” she said, turning a glare on Young. “He shouldn’t be allowed to carry a weapon.”

  The colonel ignored the latter comment, looking at Rush. “Greer said Rush told him to do it.”

  “Franklin would be dead now if we hadn’t stopped him,” said the scientist.

  “How do you know that?” demanded Wray.

  “Eli redialed the address of the planet Curtis and Palmer went through to,” Rush explained. “He was unable to raise them on the radio or get any response from the kino they sent in advance. I’m sure he’s still trying even as we speak.” He looked away. “But wherever they went, I don’t think they’re coming back. That’s why those gate addresses were locked out
. The Destiny knew they were dangerous.”

  Wray seemed unconvinced of the starship’s good intentions, and Young couldn’t disagree with that. “So, what’s our next step?” she said. “If we wait for the ship to arrive at another destination, we could be out of breathable air.”

  “That’s likely, yes,” agreed Rush. “But I don’t believe evacuating through the gate is an option. Not one that will end well. Realistically, we can’t possibly know what a completely alien planet would have in store. Not without—”

  Young’s tolerance for Rush’s manner was running thin. “You’re the one who said you wanted to go assess the long term viability, Doctor.”

  “I wanted to go because I believed what we needed was there,” Rush retorted. “And I still do!”

  “Then maybe you should have stayed,” Young shot back. “Kept looking.”

  The scientist shrugged. “There’s still time. You could send others.”

  The colonel nodded. “I intend to. I’m sending another team out to look for Greer and Scott. And then—”

  Rush didn’t let him finish. “Colonel, we’ve only just begun to understand the potential of this ship.” His attitude changed, becoming earnest, almost pleading. “We can’t abandon it. If there is one, I promise you, this ship holds the key to our way back to Earth.”

  Young folded his arms. “Then prove it.”

  Cradled in the immense fields of white, Scott felt detached, adrift from the here and now. He tried to reach out and grasp the real, but it slipped through his fingers like the pallid sands. He couldn’t hold on; and gradually he drifted back. Back to the moment.

  Back to the church.

  Father George sits side by side with him on the pews. He isn’t looking straight at him. He’s letting Scott breathe, letting him deal with it in his own time.

  But the question came soon enough.

  “Do you love her?”