Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons (19 page)

STARGATE ATLANTIS:
Consort
by Amy Griswold

Thousands of years before the Atlantis expedition, the Wraith rule victorious over a galaxy abandoned by the few surviving Ancients, but they face a new and deadly threat: attack by the Asuran Replicators. Fighting to save his queen’s hive from destruction, Guide, the Wraith later known to the Atlantis expedition as ‘Todd’, searches for a way to turn the tide of war…

Guide
wrestled his dart into a steep turn, arrowing between the hive and the Asuran cruiser through a hailstorm of glowing Asuran drones. As he had hoped, a cluster of the tiny hunting weapons fixed on his dart, streaming after him in his wake and away from the Wraith hive’s fragile hull. The hive had taken heavy damage in the Asuran attack and was dangerously weakened on its starboard side.

Three other darts were following his lead, moving to draw off more of the drones as he rolled his own ship to keep the pursuing weapons a few heartbeats from his dart’s tail. He could feel the other pilots’ satisfaction as the drone weapons veered away from the hive, and feel them begin their own evasive maneuvers. Swift’s dart was hindmost, and he hesitated a moment too long before beginning his turn; in an instant his dart was swarmed by the Asuran weapons, shattering as they burst against its fragile hull.

Guide wrenched his mind away from Swift’s as his agony flared and then moments later ended. Poorly named, he thought, and perhaps also poorly led. They had come out of hyperspace nearly on top of an Asuran battleship, and fled in the direction Guide had advised as best, directly into the waiting ambush of three smaller cruisers. Pinned between them, they had been a sitting target, and all their maneuvering had only opened up one narrow chance to break for open space.

It meant bringing the hive all too close to one of the cruisers, with only the darts to keep the Asuran weapons from battering the hive’s hull apart. The queen was at the controls of the hive herself, bringing it about on the precise course that might let them escape. The readouts streaming across the inner surface of the dart told him that course was true, but he hardly needed them. He could feel Snow’s mind brushing his, and trusted her cool confidence in the course she had plotted.

And yet it still seemed too easy. Another dart was shattering under drone weapon attack, a ripple of fear spreading through the thinning dart wings. He shut his mind to all of it, watching only the readouts, trying to think.

The drone weapons were familiar horrors, but they weren’t the worst ones the Asurans possessed. The nanites that made up their own bodies had that distinction, able to swarm like tiny parasites through the flesh of men or hive ships, consuming it like so much meat to build more abominations like themselves. They were harrying the hive, trying to cripple it, but they might not need to if they could offer an attractive enough distraction. Like the possibility of escape.

Guide flipped his dart on its axis, diving back toward the hive. He reached out with his mind to collect the nearby pilots at the same time as he spoke the orders that would stream across their own screens and whisper in their ears. He rolled, bringing them over the top of the hive to its damaged starboard side, which Snow was skillfully keeping angled away from the nearest cruiser.

He saw it then, a tiny ripple in his sensor readings, a tiny insect of a shuttle drawing next to the hull. A parasite infested with a deadly disease. If even one Asuran made it aboard, if one nanite penetrated the flesh of the hive and began replicating itself there, they were all corpses walking.

*My queen,* he said, and reached for Snow’s mind, forcing himself to the center of her attention. He could feel her anger, and some part of him flinched from it, but he forced his mind open to hers, showing her what he saw, what the hive’s damaged sensors had not. The Asuran shuttle was drawing closer, its landing gear reaching out like claws for the hull. Far too close.

He felt her understanding, immediate and horrified. *Our hull damage hasn’t begun to regenerate. If you open fire on the shuttle, you’ll breach our own hull.*

*Yes,* he said, and brought the dart around into the only possible line of attack.

For a moment she hesitated, and then he could feel the cold calm of decision, numbing ice for his own raw nerves. *Open fire on the Asuran shuttle.*

He dove on the shuttle, adjusting his angle until the last second, trying to find some line that would make it safe to fire. There was none, and he fired regardless, one burst rather than a spitting rain of energy. The first shot went home, straight into the shuttle’s main propulsion, and his heart leapt as he saw it begin tumbling as he had hoped, away from the hive.

He pursued it, putting his dart between it and the hive’s flesh. The hull was still holding, and every heartbeat brought them further away from its wounded flank. Two more darts were falling in behind him, one properly, one a fraction off its line, its inexperienced pilot wobbling on his course in his terror.

*Correct course,* he snarled at Bloodred, putting all the force he could behind it, but the boy was deaf with his own fear. He should never have put him in a dart, Guide thought, not an untried young blade barely out of the crèche, but they had so few pilots left —

The Asuran shuttle rolled, one thruster coming back online, and even as he fired, shattering its bridge compartment, it fired its own energy weapons in one last dying burst, tearing into Bloodred’s dart. The dart rolled wildly, tumbling end over end, and then drove at speed into the hive ship’s weakened hull.

Vapor streamed from the vented compartments as the hull tore, a long rip widening as the hive strained into its next turn. Within, clevermen and drones would be desperately seeking a way farther into the hive, those who hadn’t died at once of explosive decompression. The hive would stop them, sealing off the damaged compartments. He had seen it before, the marks of men’s claws in the flesh of sealed hatchways, dead men who had fought and failed to save themselves from the hive’s relentless instinct to keep those in undamaged sections alive.

There was no time to think of that now; the Asuran shuttle was tumbling harmlessly at last, its passengers no threat as long as they were frozen by the chill of space, but the drone weapons were still harrying the hive. Snow was bringing them back on course to slip through the gap between the Asuran fields of fire, the hive handling badly now but holding together. Guide signaled the remaining darts to shield the hive.

*Return,* Snow signaled. He protested wordlessly, and felt the force of her mind bending him to her will, not angry, but grimly determined. *We must jump to hyperspace as soon as we are clear. We cannot afford to lose all the darts. Retrieve your men.*

He collected as many as he could, arrowing for the dart bay. Several of the darts bruised the deck in their landing, damaged or piloted by men trembling with fatigue and the consciousness of their losses. He cracked open the canopy and climbed out, steadying himself carefully as he did so; he was trembling too, and couldn’t afford to be seen to stagger.

He felt the jump to hyperspace, a sickening wrench, and counted the darts. Twelve were missing, destroyed or left behind. He counted again, hoping for a better answer, and then snarled as someone pushed past him without apology.

It was Seeker, and Guide bit back his reprimand; for all that the man was a cleverman and not a warrior blade, they were friends of long standing, and did not stand on ceremony. Seeker reached to help two drones extract a wounded pilot from the canopy of his dart. The man’s face was badly burned, his breath irregular.

*Will he live?*

*Probably,* Seeker said, long fingers at the man’s throat to take his pulse. His mouth tightened, and he turned and drove his claws without warning into the chest of one of the drones. It growled a protest, but didn’t fight Seeker as he drained its strength. Seeker turned and tore through the wounded pilot’s shirt with his claws, pressing his feeding hand against his chest. The man gasped, and then began to breathe more steadily, though only the very edges of his burn showed signs of healing.

*Take him to the feeding cells first,* Seeker told the other drone. *Then to the infirmary. I’ll follow.* The drone obeyed, its fellow staggering in its wake.

*With the hull breached, we’re lucky we made the jump to hyperspace,* Guide said.

Seeker shook his head. *We nearly didn’t. Spark says he can’t keep us in hyperspace more than a few minutes.*

*So Spark says.*

*And so I say,* Seeker said, with a flare of temper. *The internal tissues of the hive can’t heal while they’re exposed to vacuum. Hyperspace is even more damaging to them. We must set down at the first opportunity, unless you’d like the hive to die.*

There was another wrenching lurch as they came out of hyperspace. Guide pushed men aside to reach the nearest console, and relaxed a fraction as he saw their location: a system with no inhabitable worlds, but with one rocky satellite that held enough of an atmosphere to make their repairs possible. It was a clever choice on Snow’s part, a place where the Asurans had no reason ever to go.

The repairs were the first priority, he told himself, and didn’t let himself think yet about where the hive would be left after that.

The lights were still dim hours later, and acrid smoke hung in the chill air. Guide found Seeker working to repair a ragged tear in a supporting bulkhead, where the walls strained painfully away from each other, dripping ichor, and gaped too wide to heal without tending. He was up to his elbows in the wound, wrestling its edges together with Bramble’s help.

Two blades were hunched against the corridor wall outside the door of the empty game room, its interior too dark for games, if anyone had the heart for them. They stood with shoulders together, watching in sullen exhaustion as the clevermen worked.

*Help them,* Guide said.

Thunder raised his head, stubborn challenge in his eyes. *It’s no part of our work.* Bonesnap kept his own eyes closed, his head back against the wall.

Guide snarled at them, too tired himself to leash his temper. *What work do you see that you’d be more fit for?*

*We’ve done our part.*

*You’re done when I say you’re done.*

Thunder bared his teeth. *Do you say so?*

*Would you care to argue that?*

Thunder put his hand on his knife, considering it. Seeker raised his head, his hand stilling, although he didn’t turn. Thunder saw that as well as Guide did, and turned his head with a snarl. *We’re done when you say we are,* he said. *But we’re tired. Let us be.*

*You can rest when the hive is mended. Help Seeker.*

*Little you care,* Bonesnap said hoarsely, opening his eyes at last. They burned hot when he turned on Guide. *My brother is dead, but your pet cleverman stayed huddled safe in the depths of the hive like the coward he is.*

Seeker rose, at that, and turned with his hand on his own knife, leaving Bramble wrestling abruptly with walls that threatened to close in on him. *I can hear you, you know,* he said, deceptively mildly. Thunder looked appalled, reaching out to hold Bonesnap back, but Bonesnap shook his hand away. Bramble shrank back against the hive wall as if trying to master Seldom-Seen’s gift of passing unnoticed in a crowd.

They were heartbeats from a fight that would at best draw Snow storming from the zenana to forbid it, and at worst end with more men dead senselessly on the deck.

*Enough,* Guide said, and stepped between them, drawing his own blade in the same motion and pressing it to Bonesnap’s chin. The man froze, his throat working under the point of the knife. *Must we do our enemies’ work for them? Are you that eager to die? I am sure you could have spent your life in battle if you tried. Now your death will buy us nothing.*

*We fought for the hive,* Thunder said.

*As did we all.* He lowered the knife, putting it deliberately away without taking his gaze from Bonesnap’s face. *Beg Seeker’s pardon.*

*I won’t require it,* Seeker said. His face was smeared with ichor and ash, and he looked desperately tired.

Guide ignored that. *He is the Queen’s pallax,* he said. *You will treat him with due respect.*

Bonesnap looked for one moment as if he were about to question the judgment of a queen who chose clevermen as favorites among her zenana, and then as if he thought better of it. *I beg your pardon,* he said, bending his head without grace.

*Granted,* Seeker said, with a smile that bared teeth.

*He’s grieving,* Thunder said in more appeasing tones.

*Grieve when the work is done,* Guide said, and herded them over to help mend the hive wall.

When the tear was spliced well enough that Seeker judged it would hold, and the blades and Bramble had departed for other duties, or at least to shirk somewhere not under Guide’s eye, he retreated for a moment into the darkness of the gaming room. Seeker was there already, turning one of the scattered game pieces around in his fingers.

*I see why neither of those two will be Consort,* Seeker said.

The hive had no permanent officers, a source of tension at the best of times. Young queens like Snow attracted young and disaffected men from dozens of other hives, all competing for her favor. In the years since he and Seeker came to the hive as young men themselves, with nothing but ferocity and their wits to recommend them, Guide had maneuvered his way to something like leadership of the hive’s blades. It was no easy task to lead men born to different lineages with old rivalries between them, but he succeeded better than any other could. He was the queen’s acknowledged pallax, one of her especial favorites among her zenana.

And still not Consort. Nor, at this rate, was he ever likely to be.

*I don’t worry about that, no,* he said. *Although Bonesnap’s not usually so erratic.*

*All the same, it was stupid.*

*Yes.*

*You didn’t have to interfere,* Seeker said.

*Would you have preferred me to let you stab each other?*

*Maybe,* Seeker said. He tightened his fist around the gaming piece, claws digging into his hand. *I might like to stab something, at this point.*

*Do you expect me to beg your pardon?*

*Would you?* Seeker said.

*No,* Guide said. He leaned back against the wall in the darkness and let himself sag under the weight of his own exhaustion. *How many dead?*

*Twenty-one men. Twelve were pilots lost with their darts. We lost seven in the section that decompressed. Of the other wounded, I think all have died who are going to die. Wreath will be a long time healing. I’ve put him into hibernation. Flicker may not recover vision in his left eye. I had to excise too much of the nerve for it to fully regrow.*

*Then I can’t put him back in a dart.*

*I expect not,* Seeker said. His voice was flat. *I don’t have a good count of the drones. We may have lost as many as half when that section decompressed. Seldom-Seen will be able to give you a precise count. He’s… not happy.*