STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) (14 page)

“Maybe we should try Open Sesame,” Eva said, following him toward the cliff face. She raised her hands up with a smile. “Speak, Friend, and enter!”

Beneath the ice a faint tracery of blue lines appeared, spreading up and down and across, limned not on stone but metal. With a faint grinding sound the ice cracked as the massive doors began to move.

“Oh my God,” Eva said. Chunks of ice the size of her fist fell away as the panels slid back, twice her height and twenty feet wide.

“Good job!” Ronon clapped her on the shoulder.

“Of course it responds to the ATA gene!” William hit himself in the forehead dramatically. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Everyone except Laura refrained from answering. “Because you were fixated on a solution?” she said.

“Very funny.” William turned toward the doors as they ground open. “Now let’s go in and see what we’ve got.”

“You
came to me before when you wished to test your retrovirus,” Todd said. He was pacing, and each time he came to the end of the room he swung around, exactly the same number of steps across the control room of the cruiser each time. “Because you needed Wraith subjects, and you needed my help.”

“Yeah,” John said. “But it didn’t work.”

“It did not,” Todd said, “And if it had I frankly doubt that most of us would have been willing to take it, given the diminishment in capabilities it inflicted.” He gave John a look that might have been intended as a mirthless smile, or as something entirely different. “Would you accept a retrovirus that would leave you blind? Or that would make it impossible for you to engage in intimacy?”

“Um,” John said, not entirely sure that was translating right.

“The telepathy,” Teyla said. She was sitting in the only chair in the control room, her ankles crossed, seeming utterly self possessed. “Without it a Wraith cannot emotionally connect normally.”

“Just so,” Todd said.

“It didn’t work,” John said. “We know that. So? Nobody is suggesting we use it again.”

“We have been working on our own retrovirus,” Todd said.

“We?” Teyla’s brow rose. “Queen Death?”

“My own clevermen,” he said, swinging around again.

“The retrovirus that has turned Rodney into a Wraith,” John said flatly.

“And what good would it do us, Sheppard, to have more Wraith? Why should we want to make more humans like us, to compete for already scarce resources?” Todd glowered at him. “Queen Death may find it amusing or even useful to turn one of her enemies into her pet, but it is of no long term strategic value.”

“And yours is,” Teyla said, making it a statement, not a question.

“We hope that ours will solve our problems in the long term, yes.” His eyes met Teyla’s, and John wondered if some other conversation were passing between them, one he couldn’t hear. “But we have reached the point where your cooperation would be helpful.”

“And why’s that?” John asked.

“Ours is intended for humans,” he replied.

“Why would we do that?” John began.

Teyla frowned, shaking her head slightly. “Let us hear,” she said.

“It is not to our advantage to kill our food source,” Todd said. “The process of feeding is almost inevitably fatal for the human, and so therefore it takes an exceedingly large human population to support a hive. It is possible to feed without killing, yes, but only by feeding very shallowly, not enough to sustain one for long, and even so the process is so debilitating for the human that most die anyway, or at least appear greatly aged and are no longer capable of functioning normally.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” John said. He didn’t see how this was going anywhere good, but Teyla was still listening, a little frown on her face.

“Our retrovirus is designed to provide humans with an enzyme that reacts with our enzyme during the feeding process,” Todd said.

“Like the Hoffan drug,” Teyla said.

“Indeed, in conception. But most unlike in practice. What ours does is to provide a strengthening agent for the human, so that the effects of feeding are not traumatic to the human physiology. Being fed upon would leave a human debilitated and weak, but it would not appreciably age them as it does now, and would not, were they healthy to begin with, prove fatal.”

Teyla nodded slowly. “And so, in practice, the same humans could be fed upon many times, rather than requiring fresh prey on each occasion.”

“Provided there were sufficient time left between. We do not know how long that might be. Months, certainly. Possibly years. But even if it were years, if the humans in question could continue to live and reproduce, we would not find that our herds were depleted so dangerously and quickly.” He paced away, turning again at the far end of the room. “A much smaller population of humans could sustain us. We should not have to slay within the populations of our worshippers.”

“You could just milk us like cows,” John said. The idea was sickening.

“In a word, yes. It is the difference between milking cows and slaughtering cows. If you have a limited number of cattle, the former is more sustainable.”

“I can’t believe we’re going there,” John said.

“Do you suffer any long term effects of being fed upon?” Todd challenged, raising his eyes to John’s. “I fed on you nearly three years ago, but did not drain you to death. I am sure it was unpleasant and painful, but more so than any other wound you have received? Do you feel any effects of it now, even so much as from that Iratus bug wound on your neck?”

John lifted his hand, rubbing at the raised circle of thick tissue on his neck involuntarily. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t feel any effects now.”

“That is our goal. If it were no more than that, something unpleasant and painful from which one might recover in a few weeks, and feel no effects from three years later, then we might reach symbiosis,” Todd said.

“Symbiosis?” John snorted. “Symbiosis is when two species benefit from each other. What do we get from you? It would be better for humanity if all the Wraith were dead.”

Todd’s eyes sparked. “And do you have the wherewithal to do that, John Sheppard? I think not.”

“Not yet,” John said.

“Is that what you want then? Genocide? To utterly destroy a sentient species down to the last one? You are indeed the son of the Ancients, John Sheppard.”

Teyla took a quick breath.

Todd looked at Teyla sideways. “Ask yourself if this is what your queen wants. You see her there in the semblance of one of us. She is not entirely a stranger to us, is she?” He met her eyes. “Can you say that you wish all of us dead? That you wish your kindred utterly extinguished?”

John swallowed. “If it would safeguard human lives. People come first.”

Todd’s mouth quirked. “Is that not always the answer? But who are people, Sheppard? That is the problem. And how much tainted blood does it take to make you not a person? As much as hers? As much as her son’s? There are many humans in this galaxy who would kill her in a moment for the blood she bears, who would kill her son without mercy.”

Teyla’s voice shook. “And would you show any such mercy? You have not before, when you fed upon the children of the Athosians.”

“We have killed out of hunger. Not out of fear.”

“Sateda looked like fear to me,” John said.

“I am trying to find a way that we need not kill you,” Todd snapped. “But I see I was foolish to attempt it. You would rather continue your manly posturing about how you will destroy us when it is your people who are on the brink.”

“No,” Teyla said quietly, “It is my people.” She looked from one to the other, her eyes lingering on each of them. “We have been culled to the bone, and Michael nearly finished us. It is my people who will die.”

“And so it is your decision, is it not?” Todd asked her, and there was no mockery in his tone. “You may decide, here and now, the fate of humans and Wraith both in this galaxy. It is upon you in this moment, Teyla Emmagan.”

He saw it cross her face, the knowledge and the power. The responsibility. Whatever she did, trusting Todd or not, everything that came after would be her burden. Whoever lived or died, she would know it was her choice.

Nobody could live with that. Nobody could live that way.

John straightened up. “You’re right,” he said to Todd. “We don’t have the wherewithal to kill you. It’s an academic question. We don’t have the means to do it, and Earth doesn’t have the will. The Pegasus Galaxy isn’t our first or even fifteenth priority. We’re not the Ancients. We’re just people who inherited some of their stuff.” He looked at Teyla. “I think we should hear Todd out.”

“I think so too,” she said. He couldn’t read her expression, not changed as her face was.

Todd nodded slowly. “We have been working on a retrovirus which would allow humans to be fed upon without permanent injury. Unfortunately, we have reached an impasse. Your Dr. Keller’s knowledge would be invaluable, as she was working along parallel lines with her retrovirus. If we are to be allies in truth, that is one thing I put before you. We have a possible means of ending random cullings forever. But I would like your Dr. Keller’s help.”

John took a deep breath. “We want Rodney back.”

“He is not mine to return to you,” Todd said.

“I know,” Teyla said quietly. “But in this guise I think I have a chance of reaching him. And perhaps more importantly I can be a counterweight to Queen Death.”

“You have no concept as yet how strong she has become,” Todd said. “So many hives have flocked to her and her impossible promises. They are weak minded, lured by the scent of gifts she can never provide!”

“People are like that,” John shrugged. “Tell ‘em what they want to hear and they’ll do whatever without thinking too hard about it.”

“People?” Todd’s brow rose.

“Um,” John said.

“Do you think there are none who would work against her, if another queen opposed her?” Teyla asked smoothly, opening her fingers against the smooth cloth of her skirts.

“It is hard to say,” Todd said. “It is a matter of prestige, but it is also more than that. A queen attracts a following by the force of her personality and her allure, her charisma. But she holds it by the force of her mind. I do not know if Queen Death has been challenged by another queen. In the time I have known her she has avoided meeting another queen face to face, preferring to work by proxies or simply kill them at a distance. She is young, and while the force of her charisma is considerable I do not know if she has the strength to defeat one who is not bowed by her allure.”

“And why aren’t you?” Teyla asked in that same smooth, quiet voice.

For a moment Todd hesitated. “I am very old,” he said. “And I have seen many queens come and go.”

John looked at her. “What do you think?” he asked, figuring this was about the highest stakes he could imagine, wishing for a moment that the telepathy did work with him. But it didn’t. It never would.

“It is not our decision to make alone,” Teyla said carefully. “I think that we both see the merit in your plan, but this is a decision that must be weighed by others as well. Dr. Keller must decide whether she will come, and Colonel Carter’s opinion must be considered. We will return to Atlantis and speak with them. But either way we will meet you at a rendezvous you suggest afterwards.”

John took a deep breath. “It could save lives now,” he said. “If fewer people are being killed by the Wraith, that’s a good thing. Maybe the best we can do.”

“And you will live with that, John Sheppard,” Todd said. “Very well.”

Laura shone the light on her P90 around the space beyond the doors, William almost jostling at her elbow. There was a cracked floor that might have been concrete and a broad, empty space, high ceilinged and cold.

“Hey, Robinson,” Ronon said. “Can you think about lights?”

“I can try,” Eva said. On Atlantis she didn’t have to think about lights. They just came on at her approach.
Lights
, she thought.
Lights. Lights
. But either that wasn’t how it worked or the lights weren’t working after all these centuries. It stayed stubbornly dark. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s unlikely they would work after so long,” William said, his flashlight beam playing over the floor and the walls beside the doors, pitted and fractured by ice. “This place is not in very good condition. A lot more like most of our Ancient finds than Atlantis.”

“Something still works,” Ronon said in the rear. “The power source. Let’s find it.”

“Straight in, then,” William said, checking his scanner. “And down. Perhaps there are stairs.”

Laura’s light flicked over flaking blue stripes painted on the floor. “This looks like a hanger,” she said.

“There are many reasons you might mark symbols on the floor,” William began. He stopped short as his light played ahead. “Or it might be a hangar,” he concluded. The beam of his light danced over a familiar stubby shape.

“It’s a puddle jumper,” Eva said.

“A wrecked one,” Ronon added. Even from here it was obvious the jumper was in bad shape. The left drive pod was extended, the casing blackened by fire, corroded machinery dangling from it. The hull was scorched above the drive pod, the outer ablative coating peeling back from the metal beneath. As they walked around it, the windscreen was darkened, rendered opaque by fire or time.

“That’s too bad,” Laura said. “It would be nice to find another one. But I suppose Dr. Zelenka will want to take a look anyhow.”

“He can always use parts,” Ronon said. “We can’t make a bunch of stuff. There might be some parts he can scavenge here. We can bring back a team later to do that.”

“Maybe there are more jumpers in here,” Eva said hopefully.

Unfortunately, it looked like she was wrong. They checked out the entire hangar bay, a space big enough to have held a dozen jumpers, but it was empty.

“Not even any fire suppression equipment,” Ronon said, his eyes examining the corners sharply. “Somebody stripped this place.”