STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) (24 page)

*Is that story true?* he asked, and Heedless blinked.

*Story, lord?*

Rodney waved his hand in the general direction of Heedless’s own. *The one your men were telling. About fingers.*

*Oh.* There was a distinct sense of embarrassment in Heedless’s mind. *That.*

*Yes, that.*

*Partly true,* Heedless said. The embarrassment was stronger now.
*I was working to develop an explosive that we could grow quickly. My queen then was Starfire, and among our hunting grounds was one where the humans hid themselves in caves — natural and artificial, great runs of tunnels beneath a mountain. They would barricade themselves, and it cost time and effort to dig them out, so I thought, perhaps if we had a directional explosive, it would help us, and not kill so many of them to be impractical.* He shrugged. *I am fond of explosives.*

*So I gather,* Rodney said.

Heedless looked away. If he had been human, Rodney thought, he’d be beet red by now. *So I developed a formula, which was quite effective. But it wasn’t as stable as I’d expected, and there were… accidents. I did have to regenerate my off hand twice as a result. But it should have worked, truly.*

*Really,* Rodney said. He held up his hand to forestall any further comment. *Just tell me you’re not working on this any more?*

*No, lord,* Heedless said. *Nighthaze forbade it.*

*Which, frankly, seems like a good thing,* Rodney said. The mere idea of testing explosives on a spaceship made him cringe.

Heedless ducked his head again, and Rodney turned to his own chamber. There was no door, just the curve of the hive wall itself to shadow the sleeping nest, and he put his back to Heedless as he stripped off his outer clothes. Heedless reminded him of someone, though he couldn’t quite think who — but, yes, he could. Zelenka. Heedless reminded him of Zelenka, and with that realization came the memory of the last time he’d seen Zelenka, sprawled ungainly on the floor of the ZPM room with Ember bending over him, feeding hand outstretched.

He caught himself against the chamber wall, handmouth flattening painfully against the hive’s inner skin. He flinched back from that, from the sensation that burned like ice in his palm, and felt Heedless’s attention sharpen.

*Quicksilver? Are you well?*

*Fine,* Rodney snapped. *Just fine.* He wrenched his mind into order, made himself straighten, continue removing coat and undercoat as though nothing were wrong. He’d nearly killed Zelenka — well, Zelenka had nearly killed him, too, but it had been a closer thing the other way around… He had killed others, and even if he didn’t know them, not like he knew Zelenka, it still mattered. And some of them he might know.

He hauled his mind away from those thoughts, from the memory of attacking Atlantis, of the puddle jumpers colliding as he dropped into the gateroom and headed for the event horizon. Right now, he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t afford to think about things like that. He had to concentrate on staying alive and finding a way to get himself off the hive. He set his coat in its place, the hive closing gently around it, and eased into his nest, drawing the quilts around his shoulders. He had never felt so alone.

Jennifer seemed refreshed when they returned to the laboratory, more alert as she bent again over their work. Guide returned to his own workstation, coaxing a dozen different simulations at once from the machine, scanning streaming data that read insufficient, unacceptable, unlikely, one probable abysmal failure after another.

With a soft snarl, he leaned closer and entered the information for another dozen compounds, watching green numbers chase one another down the screen. Across the room, peering at her own datascreen, Keller seemed to be faring little better, murmuring to herself beneath her breath as her fingers danced over the keypad.

Hours passed before Guide isolated a promising compound, and his breath hissed between his teeth with pleasure as he quickly keyed in the sequence to upload the relevant information to his portable datapad. He reviewed it as he strode to the workbench, checking for any possible errors, anything he might have missed, but this time he could find none.

“Oh, hey, do you have something?” Keller asked. Without waiting for an answer, she came to join him, tilting the datapad in his hand without so much as a by-your-leave. Of course the words were beyond her, but the formulas were universal, and he didn’t miss her sharp intake of breath as she studied the screen. “Wait, I was just thinking — ”

She caught up her own computing device, cradling it in one arm as she pointed excitedly at the screen. “Here, look at this — ” He saw what she meant in an instant, and an unbidden smile bared his teeth.

“Very like indeed,” he murmured, pleased. He set his datapad aside in order to tap a finger to her screen. “Though, this — ?”

Keller nodded as she moved past him to place her datapad on the bench beside his own, shoulder brushing him in passing. “Yeah, I know. But it makes sense for the ratio to be a tiny bit different if you think about it, you know? I was thinking more human, you were thinking more Wraith. But let’s run both. The other numbers match, and …”

Guide watched her hands as she talked, soft and unscarred, pale as some soft fruit. He was coming, grudgingly, to respect their skill and even their strange alien grace, as unfinished as they seemed. His gaze traveled upwards, taking in her long neck and smooth cheeks, still rounded with youth.

There was no fear in her, not now, at work. She reached for a slide, and her wrist brushed the knuckles of his feeding hand, and while he shivered instinctively, she did not even seem to notice. He marveled at that, as one waits with a thrill when prey picks its way close, stumbling into the trap of its own choosing.

And yet he had no desire to feed. He told himself it was because she was too useful too him at the moment, but he could not quite believe that it would be any different if he came upon her trussed for feeding. That was what came of knowing their names, he thought, with bitter amusement at his own foolishness, but it was not only that.

Unbidden he remembered a young queen at his side, gazing up at him raptly as he explained his work. Her hair had been the color of the sun, crimson as the blood of humans, exactly like her mother’s. Guide remembered her mental voice racing as she demanded answers, sought them with an understanding as quick as any cleverman’s.

“Guide?” Jennifer said, and he blinked. She was frowning at him, concerned. “I said, are you all right?”

He felt very old, suddenly, the memory like the ache of a long-healed wound. “I...sired a daughter, once,” he said, looking at the workbench as his fingers shifted slides, their glass edges sliding together with precise, faint clicks. “It is a great honor to be chosen to father any child, but to father a queen…” He trailed off, not sure she could grasp such a thing. Humans bred like animals, with no care taken in the choosing.

“I didn’t know you guys actually— I mean, I suppose new Wraith have to come from somewhere, but—” Obviously discomfited, she fumbled with a slide. “What’s her name?” she asked, in an entirely different tone.

“Her name
was
Alabaster,” he said after a moment. “Pale and strong as stone. Very much like our idea of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said. It sounded like sympathy, but he told himself it was only that humans were softhearted toward the young of any kind, even nurturing baby animals as though they were their own kind. Their young were born so helpless, coming forth to shiver in the air when Wraith young would still be cradled in the shipwomb, coming forth only when they were ready to be weaned and to learn more than what the constant hum of the hive taught them.

“It was long ago,” he said.

Keller nodded, looking away. “Right,” she said. “Okay. I want to get these set up, and then I’m going to bed.”

“Very well,” he replied, and set to work. In his mind, however, as his hands kept busy, he kept remembering the touch of that young mind, as bright and unscarred as ice, or stone, or snow.

It was
good to be home, Steven Caldwell thought, back to the Mountain where the guys on the guardpost didn’t even blink when you and three or four other people appeared out of thin air. Of course, they were expecting him. He’d called in and been ordered to Cheyenne Mountain, but since there were now precautions against beaming down through twenty six levels of substructure, he had to beam to the outside guardpost.

“Colonel Caldwell, sir,” the sergeant on duty said, snapping to attention. “General Landry requests that you report immediately.”

“On my way,” Caldwell said, making his way inside and toward the elevator, followed by his exec. Their
Daedalus
flight suits were a badge of honor and got quite a few glances among the blue-clad SGC personnel.

He wasn’t surprised that the moment he stepped out of the elevator the first person he saw was Richard Woolsey. Nor was he surprised that right behind him was Lieutenant General O’Neill. And Major General Landry. And Brigadier General Pellegrino.

“Welcome back, Colonel,” O’Neill said.

“Glad to be back, sir,” Caldwell said. He hadn’t expected all the brass from Homeworld Command, but he supposed that he ought to have, even though he’d sent his report ahead. No one with the IOA except maybe technically Woolsey. That would account for debriefing at Cheyenne Mountain. Whatever was going on in Atlantis, O’Neill wanted to keep it a purely Air Force matter as long as he could. Which said something right there.

“If you gentlemen will come this way,” Landry said, shaking his hand, “I’ve got a nice comfortable conference room just over here. Steven, I see your exec there is waving hard copies of your report, but I think it’s safe to say we’ve already read it. I think we’d like to go straight to the Q and A, if that’s ok with you.”

“Of course, sir,” Caldwell said. As though he’d say, no, that’s not ok. I can’t actually answer questions to my boss and my bosses’ boss.

There was the usual muddle as everyone tried to sort themselves out in an unfamiliar conference room by rank, with Landry bumping someone else down the table because O’Neill was standing in front of the end seat like he owned it, and there was a civilian who wouldn’t budge, Dr. Daniel Jackson. Caldwell wondered what the hell Jackson was doing here, but it wasn’t his call.

Eventually everybody settled. Caldwell wished somebody would offer coffee, but nobody did.

“So.” O’Neill steepled his hands on top of the hard copy of the report. “Tell me about Queen Death.” He glanced down the table. “Catchy name. How do they come up with these things?”

Jackson looked over the top of his glasses. “I’ve been saying for years we should rename ourselves Infinitely Evil Space Superiority Command, but nobody listens to me.”

Woolsey cleared his throat. He wasn’t driving the conversation, and that said something important about how things had been going politically on Earth. “Colonel Caldwell?”

“I think we have a serious problem,” Caldwell began.

Jack had come straight from Peterson Air Force Base to Stargate Command, but Daniel hadn’t been needed until Caldwell’s briefing, so he had his car there. Jack thought Daniel waited with admirable patience through the pleasantries afterwards, waited all the way through the familiar ride up in the elevator and the check out through the guardposts. He waited until Jack actually closed the car door.

“When were you planning on telling me?” Daniel said.

“Telling you what?”

“That you’d put my name in to replace Woolsey in Atlantis.” Daniel gave him a sideways glance as he craned his neck to pull out of the narrow parking place.

Jack spread his arms on the broad leather armrests. “Never thought you’d get an SUV. I thought you cared about saving the Earth and all.”

“It’s a hybrid.” Daniel hauled the steering wheel around expertly, managing to get out with at least an inch to spare on Jack’s side. “And you’re not going to get me off topic that easily. What were you thinking, Jack? The IOA hates me about as much as they do…”

“Carter?”

“I was going to say you,” Daniel said. “And she has a first name. You could use it.”

“Force of habit,” Jack said. “And now who’s getting off topic? Look, I know you hate the IOA…”

“What? Because they tried to have me executed a couple of years ago?” Daniel threaded his SUV through the parking lot.

“And you just hold a grudge over a little thing like that.”

“Where to start?” Daniel put on the brake and stopped in the middle of the row. “Janet’s death? Sending agents to dig up dirt on Sam’s private life? Wanting to leave you frozen in stasis forever? Turning a blind eye to Kinsey’s bullying?” He looked at Jack sideways. “I’m a poison pill, aren’t I?”

“Not to Desai,” Jack said. “He loves you. So does Nechayev. For that matter Dixon-Smythe could care less.”

“But you think the rest of them will panic and want Woolsey back.” Daniel shook his head. “Because they think they can’t push me around.”

“They know they can’t push you around,” Jack clarified. “If you were in Atlantis they’d have Elizabeth all over again.”

“She did a fine job,” Daniel said quietly.

“I know.”

Daniel started the car moving again. “It’s not that I mind you using me in your game with the IOA. But I wish you’d tell me first. I’d rather not hear about it from Landry.”

“Sorry about that,” Jack said. He probably should have mentioned it to Daniel. There was no need to play his cards that close to his chest. Force of habit, he supposed, to tell no one anything that wasn’t essential.

Daniel looked mollified. “So do you want to know what I think?”

Jack tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Ok, Daniel. What do you think?” If he really hadn’t wanted to know, he wouldn’t have agreed to let Daniel give him a ride home. The motorpool had cars.

“I think the Atlantis expedition is screwed.” There was the squeal of brakes somewhere behind, but Jack ignored it. It wasn’t as bad as Sam. Daniel drove absentmindedly. Sam drove suicidally. “There’s no will to put into it what it requires, either here or internationally.”