STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (32 page)

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?”

“Do I…?” He is so brittle at that moment that he is afraid he will shatter if he answers. “I don’t…” And when at last he does reply, it is to a different question. “She’s not going to have it.”

The old man felt that. Like a punch in the gut, it hit him hard.

“You’re sure?”

“She’s sixteen. We don’t even really know each other.”

The silence goes on, and it is like darkness. Filling the chapel, blotting out the light in the room.

“Is there any chance she will change her mind?” He asks this, but the old man knows the answer already from the cast of Scott’s face.

“No.”

And then the other question. The real one. The one the future turned on.

“What are you going to do, Matthew?”

“I don’t know.” The truth is so heavy upon him. “About anything.”

“I see.” But he doesn’t, not really.

“I thought I did. I thought he was my calling. But now…”

He looked at me with such sadness then. Not disappointment, but something worse than that.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

It’s the last thing Scott expects to hear. “Why? I’m the one who is weak. It’s my fault.”

“No… it’s not.”

He looked away, like he was lost in thought, staring into a distance only he could see. And I was blinded by my tears.

“It’s not yours.” Scott reaches for him, searching for connection, for something solid.

But then he is sand, dissolving before my eyes, crumbling, dissipating, gone.

He is sand.

Sand—

It was part of the dream, the memory; or perhaps it wasn’t. Later he would think on it and try to find the places where one ended and the other began, but it did not resolve itself. In Scott’s mind it stayed murky and unclear.

The swirl of sand had returned once more, twisting around him. It spun up in front of him as he lay on the slope of the white dune. The vortex turned faster and faster, seeming to take on power and build energy before a sudden release of force. The swirling mass punched down into the sand, and from beneath a dark stain grew. Welling up from below the surface, liquid rose. Bubbling, flowing, a pool of ink-gray water emerged around Scott’s face, soaking into his jacket, touching his arid, burned skin.

He roused. Blinked and coughed, swallowed by reflex and gasped. Scott lifted himself up on shaky arms, his eyes widening.

Water
. There was
water
here, hiding beneath the sands.
And water meant—

Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, Scott drew on his reserves of strength and plunged his hands into the damp sand. Using his fingers like blades of a spade, he tore out great clods of the wet powder, desperately digging in.

When he found it, he gave a wordless noise of elation. Under the sand, beneath the layer of the dry lake bed, a granular mass of crumbly sediment was visible, pale and powdery. It was soft, and it broke apart easily in his hands.

Scott dove for his pack and upended it, spilling out the testing kit on to the dune. He was aware that his hands were shaking, and concentrated on steadying himself. Carefully, he scooped a measure of the sediment into a flask, then gave up the last splash of water in his canteen to the mix. He swirled it, firing the pocket torch and placing the flame at the flask’s underside.

He snatched at the bottle of reagent, dropping the colored acid into the solution. The fluid turned red and he worked it, swilling it around and around with the torch flame licking at the bottom of the flask. Scott held his breath, and like a magician’s trick, the crimson thinned, became insubstantial…and then clear.

He wanted to yell out but he could barely speak. Getting to his feet, he saw the dull glitter of the lake bed beyond and gave a weary nod. Palmer had been right all along.

“This is Scott,” he husked into his radio. “Anyone read? Come in.” He released the push-to-talk button and static chattered back at him. He tried again. “I found it. I found the lake bed.” He looked down. “I’ve got the lime.”

Still no reply. Drawing back his cuff, Scott looked at the dusty face of his wristwatch and blinked, unsure if he was reading it right. He rubbed at his eyes, trying to focus.

The time
. He felt sick inside as it dawned on him. “Oh God….”
I’m too late
.

No matter how fast he could go, he would never make it back to the Stargate before the time limit expired. He called into the radio again. “If you can hear me…
wait
. I’m coming. Just wait!”

With frantic speed, Scott tore the collapsible entrenching shovel from its pocket on his back pack and desperately began digging up great divots of the crumbly sediment, shoveling the powdery material into his bag as fast as he could.

The heat had pushed Eli into a dozy reverie, and he sat on the stone ramp, trying to shade himself with a sliver of shadow from the Stargate; but the gateway’s sudden reactivation shocked him into motion and he broke into a scrambling run, out into the sand. Each time he’d seen the flash of energy when the gate opened it had made him jump, and he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to someone standing in front of it when it ‘kawooshed’ open.
Nothing good
, he imagined. Then another unpleasant thought struck him;
what if you were stepping through when it closed?
He made a sour face, thinking about
The Fly
again.

The gate spun, the chevrons glowing, and Eli took a tighter grip on Greer’s pistol; at this point he was way beyond knowing what to expect. The wormhole opened and he raised the gun in a shaky, two-handed grip; then he almost dropped it in relief when he saw a familiar face come through. It was the woman Scott had shared a smile with in the corridor, back on Icarus.
Lieutenant James, yeah, that was her.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Hi,” he managed.

She nodded to him. “Why don’t you let me have that?” James plucked the gun from his hands and made it safe.

Two more people followed her through, men in Marine gear with the names ‘Spencer’ and ‘Gorman’ on their jackets.

Eli felt a little giddy and gave a crooked smile. “Table for three?” he croaked. “I’m sorry, but we only have outdoor seating.”

James handed him a water bottle. “Take this,” she said. “You sound like you need it.”

Eli attacked the canteen greedily and gulped down mouthfuls of water, nodding. It was the best drink he’d ever had. “Next planet we find,” he managed, between swigs, “Nice and cold, please.”

“We’re going to make a sweep for Greer and the lieutenant,” she told him. Spencer and Gorman were already heading out at a fast clip, and James jogged up to follow them. “Oh yeah, we brought you this, too.” She dug in her pack and tossed something toward him.

Eli reached out to grab the object but it slowed to a halt and hovered in the middle of its arc; a replacement kino. “Thanks,” he called, but they were already over the dune and gone.

He paused, staring at the Stargate, thinking of the shade and the cool of the
Destiny
. He could dial back, step through and get out of this murderous heat, just step-step-step and he’d be there. He drank the rest of the water slowly, then finally turned away.

Eli had promised Greer he would be here when he got back; somewhere out there the Marine was keeping a promise not to leave a comrade behind. Eli nodded to himself. He wasn’t going to let some sunburn make a liar of him.

Through fire, Scott lumbered across the dunes, dragging the heavy pack behind him across the sand in jerks of motion. Every inch he advanced was pain, his joints tight with the effort. The pack felt like an impossible tonnage, and in his mind’s eye he imagined it was loaded down with great ingots of heavy steel, the weight of them so great it threatened to sink through the mantle of the sand and drag him down with it into a bottomless abyss.

He shot an angry look into the sky, flinching away from the pale yellow sun riding high in the cloudless blue above. Scott wanted to shout at it,
Do your worst!
but he couldn’t form the words. His mouth was as arid as the sands, and the brief surge of groundwater that had soaked his tunic had already evaporated away.

A sudden, panicked thought worked its way through his mind and Scott turned to look back at the pack; he had a horrible vision of it split open, the precious mineral sediment inside scattered out behind him like a contrail. But the pack had not broken and his load was still intact. If he could just get it back to the Stargate before it was too late. Before the time ran out. Before
he
ran out.

Scott planted his foot wrongly on his next step and fell hard, losing his grip on the pack’s straps. The impact of the sand slammed into his body and his breath crashed from his lungs in an aching rattle. He tried to lift himself up, but his muscles twitched and spasmed. Scott sank back into the embrace of the desert.

Camile clasped her hands together to give them something to do, to stop her from wringing them over one another. Nervous energy was warring with her body’s fatigue from the ever dwindling oxygen supply, and caught between the two, she roamed the decks of the
Destiny
, doing what she was best at — observing people, measuring them and following their thoughts.

She went from room to room. In the quarters, there was mostly silence from each open door, not even the murmur of quiet conversation now. From one room she heard the faint tremors of a man softly crying, and she walked on. Wray saw survivors lying on bunks, or huddling in hallways. As she passed them by they looked at her, the questions open on their faces.
What’s going on? Is there any word?
But she had no answers to give them; Wray knew as much — or as little — about their fate as they did.

Unseen at the door of the room Colonel Young had taken, Wray watched Tamara Johansen work to mend Jeremy Franklin’s bullet wound. The lieutenant had co-opted Chloe Armstrong to assist her, and the young girl struggled on, her face tight and pale with aversion at the blood and torn flesh in front of her. Tamara dug into the meat of the man’s shoulder and drew out the flattened head of the rifle bullet. Camile had to turn away at the sounds of her working on the ripped, injured flesh.

Wray went on to the gate room. She’d hoped that the wormhole they had opened earlier might stave off the pounding headache tightening around her head, as whatever air passed through the Stargate might bring some tiny measure of fresh oxygen through; but she had learned to her chagrin that the wormhole only worked one-way, so while
Destiny
’s bad air bled out, nothing had come through to replace it across the shimmering silver membrane of non-matter. For now, the gate remained closed.

Brody stood with Sergeant Riley and a few of the other civilian scientists, nursing the workings of the air purification unit that had been pulled from the ship’s walls.

“We still have options,” Brody was saying. “I mean, I think there must be replacement stores of this material on board the ship.” He poked at the black slurry caking the scrubber unit. “It simply doesn’t make sense that the Ancients would send this vessel into space without them.”