Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons (34 page)

Jack swallowed a retort and turned away from the window. Daniel, older now than Jack was, regarded him with serious eyes. Teal’c, strange with his white-streaked hair, stood watching him from the door. Good men, good friends — but not
his
friends. He had to let them go, for real this time.

He glanced up at the ceiling. They’d beamed him right into these quarters, he figured they could beam him right out again. “So I just click my heels and say ‘There’s no place like home’?”

Daniel smiled. “When you’re ready.”

He took a breath. “I’m ready.”

“Then take care of yourself, Jack. Stay out of trouble.”

“You too.”

Daniel tapped something in his ear and said, “Ready to transport in five, four…”

But before the beam activated, Teal’c crossed the room. With a rebellious look at Daniel he said, “Do
not
stay out of trouble, O’Neill. Seek trouble out.” He unholstered his zat, handed it to him. “And when you find it, fix it.”

Jack turned the gun over in his hands, a slow grin spreading across his face. “You betcha,” he said as the Asgard beam swept him away.

Dawn was breaking over the mountains when Jack materialized in the parking lot of Bosco’s Tavern, still wearing his BDUs and holding Teal’c’s zat in his hands. The air was cool, fresh with promise, and he let it fill his lungs. Eyes closed, he lifted his face to the sun and for a moment he simply existed — young and strong, with life rolling out ahead of him.

A breeze ruffled his hair and he opened his eyes. It was time to begin.

Jogging over to his bike, he dug the keys out of his tac vest before shrugging it off and stuffing it and the zat into the top box. He’d just fired up the engine when an old man with a broom came out from behind the tavern, sweeping early fall leaves.

He nodded when he saw Jack. “We don’t open for breakfast ’til six-thirty.”

“That’s okay,” Jack said. “I’m not staying.”

Leaning on the broom, the guy looked at him the way old men look at the young — a mixture of envy and indulgence. “And where’re you headed so early, son?”

Jack grinned. “Trouble, sir,” he said and gunned the engine, turning the bike toward the road and the sunrise. “I’m headed for trouble.”

STARGATE ATLANTIS:
A Blade of Atlantis
by Jo Graham

This story takes place during the last episode of STARGATE ATLANTIS season one, “The Siege” Part 2. While waiting for the Wraith hive ships to arrive, and hoping that Daedalus arrives first, Atlantis’ defenders engage in a desperate struggle to prepare the city while dealing with the Wraith commando teams who have beamed into the city bent on sabotage. If they could not have held the city until Daedalus arrived, the history of the Pegasus galaxy would have been very different…

Dr. Radek
Zelenka crouched behind a corner, listening. The sweat was running down his forehead into his eyes even though it was decidedly chilly in the depths of the city. There were Wraith in the city. They had known that when he and two of Colonel Everett’s Marines had set out from the control room to the chair. The chair room itself was secure — it was the kilometers of corridors between that weren’t safe, and Dr. Weir had shut down the city’s internal transport system so the Wraith couldn’t use it.

And yet it must be done. The chair must be online before the hive ships arrived, and there was no choice but that he go and do it. He had left Rodney to complete modifications to the puddle jumper that was to carry a nuclear warhead, and gone with the Marines.

A nuclear warhead. Radek shook his head. He had been quite determined never to have anything to do with nukes, and see how that had turned out? No, he could not love them for any reason, had always thought he would not use them even to save his own skin, so great a moral evil were they. But, when his skin was indeed on the line, it looked different, as he supposed it always did — another thing he had learned about himself in Atlantis that was not entirely comfortable.

One of the Marines motioned all clear, and Radek got up carefully. “It’s good, doc,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They hurried along the corridor until it opened into a wider area, perhaps some kind of former gallery or store, with floor to ceiling columns of twisted opaque and mirrored glass. It was very pretty, but also deceptive as their reflections shifted with each step. One of the Marines saw movement and spun around, the barrel of his weapon rising. As he moved the reflection changed, revealing the movement to be their own.

“Damn,” the Marine said.

“Yeah, don’t open up in here unless you have to,” the other said, gesturing at the columns. “Breaking all that glass will make a hell of a lot of noise.”

“It is distracting,” Radek said. “For a moment I thought I saw…”

The Wraith stepped out from behind the glass column, a flash of blue light emanating from his stunner. It caught the two Marines in its beam, dropping them bonelessly to the floor.

Radek dodged behind another column. He could no longer see the Wraith or the Marines either, save for one outflung arm where one of the Marines lay unconscious on the floor. There was the sound of the Wraith’s footsteps, and Radek risked retreating to another column. The stunner fired again, blue beam illuminating his reflection on another column. The mirrored confusion worked both ways. With a rush, Radek ran for the corridor door, back the way he and the Marines had come. There was nothing else to do. He was unarmed, and he certainly could not drag two unconscious Marines. The best he could do was escape.

The Wraith followed. Radek heard his footsteps behind.

He crouched down, prying the cover off an air vent. He squeezed in, pulling the cover into place behind him. He wiggled backwards on his stomach, trying to get as far in as possible. If he could crawl back far enough that if the Wraith looked in he wouldn’t see him…

His questing feet encountered nothing, and he slipped suddenly backward down a vertical shaft, falling perhaps two meters before he landed on his feet. Beneath him a grid gave slightly, and he glanced down, his breath sounding harsh in his own ears. It was a ceiling vent in an unoccupied corridor one level down. Radek went to his knees on the grid. Was this the kind of vent… yes! There was ductwork running in both directions above the ceiling. He could easily crawl along it safely with the Wraith who had been hunting him unable to get him as he was now beneath the floor. An excellent plan. But which direction? After a moment to get his bearings, Radek started off down the duct.

He was alone, deep in the superstructure in chambers he’d never seen before. Of course he could look for a terminal and activate it, which would involve finding some sort of control facility with power. Or he could turn on his radio, which would be tantamount to telling the Wraith where he was. This did not seem like a good idea. Better, he thought, to look for a terminal or a turning that would lead him to a familiar part of the city. There were literally a hundred kilometers of corridors beneath the surface, and he had only begun to learn the least of the city’s secrets in the year he had lived here.

Radek crawled along the ducts until he came to another vertical shaft. At the bottom there was a grate in the wall, an outlet into the room below. Carefully he slid down and looked out.

The room was mostly dark, a sole emergency light illuminating what had probably once been office space judging by the built in surfaces at desk height along one wall. There was no sound except the faint whisper of the ventilation, the city breathing. Excellent. The grate stuck and he had to kick it out, but he told himself the sound would not carry far coming from inside a closed room.

Radek got to his feet. Yes, some kind of office. There was a closed door which probably led to the corridor he had just paralleled in the ceiling. The door stuck. No power, but the manual override was just inside. He opened the door very quietly.

Indeed it was a major corridor. It had the barred lighting fixtures in the walls, which even dimmed gave off enough light to see clearly. Turned on full, they would be bright as daylight. Wide and unobstructed, this corridor went somewhere important. Perhaps it was one of the main access corridors that crisscrossed the city. If so, he would soon reach a transport chamber. Yes, they were deactivated, but they had maps…

A noise ahead caused him to dash into the nearest cross corridor. It was narrower and darker, only illuminated by the light bleeding in from the main hall. Radek hurried down it a little way, stopping behind one of the pillars that jutted out into it containing things that looked like fishtanks that may once have been decorative. He stopped, his breathing sounding very loud to himself.

Slow footfalls. Long, slow footfalls like a man in boots walking cautiously. Wraith.

Radek froze. Perhaps he had gotten far enough down. If he moved now, the Wraith would hear him. If he ran, the Wraith would stun him and then feed at leisure. And he was unarmed. No, his best hope was to be as quiet as possible.

The footsteps stopped. Was the Wraith scanning? Listening? Radek didn’t move.

There was an explosion of sound in the main corridor, a P90 opening up with a spray of bullets, the horrible sounds of impacts. A two second burst, and then it stopped. Radek looked around the pillar, ready to thank the Marines. Ah, not Marines.

The young man who bent over the Wraith’s body to check him for signs of life was Athosian, small and lean and dark haired, his hair pulled back in a long tail with a twisted steel clasp. Another Athosian stood behind him, a P90 in his hands, tall and broad-shouldered and vaguely familiar. The two women with them wore Atlantis scientists’ uniforms, one South Asian and the other with short red hair, a P90 slung across her chest like she was used to it.

The red haired one asked in clipped British tones, “Dead?”

“Dead,” the Athosian who bent over the body said. He looked up. “Dr. Chandrapura, anything on the life signs detector?”

The South Asian woman glanced down at the white box in her hand. “No more Wraith. But there is a human. There.” She looked up, her eyes meeting Radek’s as he stepped from behind the pillar.

“You have a life signs detector,” he said. “You have the ATA gene.”

“Yes.”

The big Athosian was staring at him. “Dr. Zelenka?”

“Yes.” Radek drew himself up. “Who did you expect?”

“We need to go,” the British woman said quickly.

The young Athosian who had checked the body met her eyes. “Do we?”

Radek looked at him, at the big Athosian who seemed familiar. “You are Athosians who wanted to stay and fight and who the Colonel gave weapons.”

The big man’s hands relaxed out of fists, and he swallowed. “Absolutely,” he said. “Teyla said we could help find the Wraith who were in the city.”

Which was absolutely true. Teyla had recruited some of the Athosians to help guard the city, and Colonel Everett had armed them. The younger Athosian was unfamiliar, but Radek did not know all the Athosians. But the big man was lying. He was staring at Radek like he’d seen a ghost, and his unease was palpable.

“And you.” Radek looked at the two women. “I know every single scientist in the city. I supervise every scientist in the city. I do not know you. And we do not have a Dr. Chandrapura with the ATA gene. There is no such person.”

“We came with Colonel Everett,” the British woman said quickly.

Radek’s eyebrows rose. “I did not see any civilians come with him. In fact, we have evacuated most of our civilian scientists to the Alpha site. Who are you really?”

“She’s a Marine,” the tall Athosian said.

“Then why is her accent British rather than American?” Something was very, very wrong here.

“I’m a British Marine,” she said crisply. “Lt. Jillian Draper, Royal Marines.”

“A female Commando?”

Her eyes widened slightly. “We have them now,” she said. “It’s not 1940.”

Radek shook his head. “You’re lying,” he said. “If this is a trick of the Wraith, it’s very, very good. But not quite good enough.” If it was, he was trapped, but being trapped made him bold. “I do not know who you are, but you are all lying.”

The young Athosian with the long dark hair stood up abruptly. “There’s no point in deceiving Dr. Zelenka,” he said. “Remember? He has to know.”

“T.J.,” the other Athosian began.

“He has to know,” the Athosian named T.J. continued. “Because he already does. Otherwise he couldn’t have told General Carter.”

“You can’t say that in front of him,” Lt. Draper said.

“Why not? There might be lots of General Carters. Dr. Zelenka has to know.”

The tall Athosian let out a long breath. “T.J. has a point.”

“Know what?” Radek demanded. Not a trick of the Wraith, but something far stranger. “Who are you?”

Draper looked at T.J. and then Radek, then nodded slowly. “If we must. Go on.”

T.J. took a step toward Radek, his hands held away from his sides. “Dr. Zelenka, have you ever seen me before?”

He was small and dark, lean muscled arms beneath a brown leather vest that laced over loose black pants, his only ornament the oddly scrolled steel clasp in his hair. He looked like a martial artist. He was a stranger, and yet there was something about him that reminded Radek of someone, something that teased at the edge of his thoughts. “I do not think I have,” he said.

The young man’s eyes did not leave his. “What would you say if I told you that you will see me for the first time four years from now upstairs in the infirmary, when I lie in my mother’s arms as a day old baby? You will come to see me and you will bring me a stuffed giraffe and you will tell my mother that you had never lost hope that she would be saved. And you will say no more because you cannot. You cannot say that you knew I would be born and that she would be rescued.”

“What?” Radek said.

He lifted his chin. “My name is Torren John Emmagen. We are here from the future.”

Radek took a deep breath. He should say it was impossible, but he knew it was not. There had been accidents with the Stargate at the SGC, accidents that had created temporal paradoxes, that oft-written about and theoretically impossible thing — time travel. It could happen. An accident with the gate… But no. They had not spoken like people who were lost, the victims of a random conjunction of a solar flare and an outgoing wormhole. They were exactly where they were meant to be. They had learned to control the phenomenon that Lt. Colonel Carter had described. General Carter. Of course.

All this went through Radek’s mind in the moments that they waited, looking at him. He put his hands in his pockets. “So General Samantha Carter sent you into the past?” he asked calmly. “From what year?”

Dr. Chandrapura looked nonplussed. The tall Athosian started laughing. “I told you Dr. Zelenka was the smartest man in Atlantis,” he said to her. “Didn’t I tell you so, Saroj?”

Another piece fit into place. “Jinto?” Radek looked at the big man over the top of his glasses? “Is that you?”

“It’s me.” Jinto grinned. “It’s Dr. Hallingson now. I have a PhD from a university on Earth.”

“In what?”

“Mechanical engineering,” he replied. “Thanks to you, Dr. Z. If you hadn’t…”

“You shouldn’t tell him that,” Dr. Chandrapura said. “Remember, if it’s not about the mission…”

“Quite right,” Radek said briskly, though he itched to know. “You should not tell me more than is necessary. But Jinto, I presume Lt. Draper and Dr. Chandrapura were on Earth, and T.J. was not born yet — but is not your presence here a paradox?”

Jinto shifted from one foot to the other. “I think it would be if I ran into myself. But as General Carter discovered when she visited 1969, it’s possible to be in the same time twice if you’re not in close proximity. She traveled from Colorado to New York in 1969 when she was also a baby at Pope Air Force Base. General O’Neill was a teenager in Minnesota and Dr. Jackson was a young child in Seattle. All three of them were already on Earth in that same time, but they were careful not to go anywhere they might encounter themselves. In this time…” he glanced around the walls of the corridor, “I’m already at the Alpha site. Eleven year old me, that is. As long as I’m gone before I get back, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Radek frowned. “So why are you here?”

“To help you,” Jinto said simply.

Lt. Draper cleared her throat. “Rather, to make certain that the command chair is functional before the Wraith fleet arrives. If it is not, Atlantis will fall to the Wraith before the
Daedalus
brings the ZPM that will allow you to power the shield. And the only way for the chair to be functional is for you to reach it alive. Currently you’re cut off from the chair and from the nearby transport chambers by at least ten Wraith. It is highly likely that without assistance you will never reach it.”

“And then our world will never exist,” T.J. said solemnly. “I will never exist. My mother will be killed in the last defense of Atlantis.”