Stargate Atlantis: Halcyon Page 7

  She spun in place, desperate to try one last time to warn the children. The players turned and altered as they finally heard the faint cry that she pressed from her throat. The children were Wraiths, hands distending into claws of black nails, hair fading white, faces crinkling as new features emerged and orchards of fangs split from red mouths. They advanced on her, snapping and purring at one another, and suddenly she understood that they were not in danger.

  I am.

  And then she was running, running and fleeing, but nothing moved, the road sucked her down, and the Wraith came close, hands extending, each of them desperate for a taste of her.

  John heard the scream, and the sound jolted him instantly to wakefulness from the light doze he had slipped into. Before he could properly register it, the reflexive actions of his training had propelled him out of the bedroom with his Beretta pistol in his hand. He was across the anteroom in ten quick paces, bisecting the circular chamber and rushing headlong for the guest quarters provided for Teyla Emmagan. He was dimly aware of movement behind him as Mason and the others were alerted.

  Sheppard saw the splintering around the brass handle and the gap where the door was hanging ajar. Leading with the gun, safety off and hammer back, the colonel shouldered the door open and moved swiftly inside.

  It was stuffy; he smelled human sweat, feverish and clammy. In the center of the bedroom, identical in layout to each of the chambers off the anteroom, there was a wide bed with a net of gossamer muslin thrown over it. The sleeping pallet was in utter disarray and the silken sheets were a coiled snarl, dangling off the bed and heaped on the wooden floor. John came around the side of the muslin mesh and there was Ronon, also armed, low down in a crouch next to the tangle of sheets. Teyla lay there, shivering.

  "Oh," managed Sheppard, a sudden and unexplained dart of resentment rising in him. He pushed it away. "You, uh, were-

  "I was outside. Heard her cry out," explained Dex. He jerked a thumb at the door. "She locked it," Sheppard thought he caught a note of awkwardness in the other man's voice. "Came running."

  "Yeah, me too." The colonel made his weapon safe, holstered it and bent down to help the Athosian woman extricate herself from the sheets.

  "Forgive me, John," she mumbled. "I... It was..."

  "Problem, sir?" called Mason from the doorway. "She need a doc, sir?"

  "We'll handle this," Ronon told him firmly.

  Mason said nothing and backed away.

  Teyla took a long draught from a carafe of water beside the bed. As Sheppard watched, her breathing eased. "That was most disturbing."

  Dex eyed her. "Bad dream? Is that all it was?"

  "It was vivid. I felt something."

  "Felt something as in a nightmare something, or..." Sheppard made a winding-up motion near his temple. "Or a Wraith kinda something?"

  "I cannot make sense of it," she said, her brow furrowing in concentration. "The recall fades. It is like trying to catch smoke in my hands." She licked dry lips. "Before, when the Wraith touched my mind, my dreams, it was different. There was intelligence there, malicious but with clear intent. This was not like that."

  "Go on," said John. He was the first to admit he didn't fully understand the workings of Teyla's Wraith-altered physiology, but what he did know was that she could touch the edges of the telepathic network the aliens used to communicate. If that was bleeding into her dreams, then he had to give it his complete attention.

  "They were more..." Sheppard could see Teyla was struggling to hold on to the dream images, trying hard to articulate them. "Vicious. Primitive. Like wild animals."

  "The Wraith have always been animals," said Ronon, with feeling.

  "But not like this. Not literally." She sipped more water. "Colonel, I am certain of one thing. This dream was not just the creation of my mind. There are many Wraith here, on Halcyon."

  "How many?" Sheppard felt ice forming in the pit of his stomach.

  "Hundreds. Perhaps more."

  Ronon and John exchanged a loaded glance. "Are you okay now?" Sheppard asked.

  Teyla gave him a shaky smile. "Yes, thank you. If I could have a moment alone to gather myself."

  The two men left the room. "We'll be right outside if you need us," added Dex. "Sorry about the door."

  Mason and the other SAS soldiers straightened as they walked back into the antechamber. Sheppard saw right away that they had a wary look about them, as if they'd been caught discussing something they shouldn't have. Mason returned a level gaze, but the question was clear in Corporal Clarke's eyes.

  "Let's hear it," said the colonel. "Who's going to say what you're all thinking?"

  Private Hill found an interesting piece of carpet to occupy his attention. After a moment, Clarke gave a slight frown. "Lieutenant Colonel, sir," he began, pronouncing the rank as Left-tenant in the way the Brits always did. "Your lass there, Tina..."

  "Teyla,"

  "Yeah. There was talk back in the city about her. Some of your Marine Corps lads said the bozos did something to her, when she was a nipper, like."

  Sheppard noticed that Mason wasn't doing anything to stop Clarke from speaking his mind; clearly the senior non-com wanted to know the same thing as his subordinate. "She's not a danger to the unit, if that's where you're going with this," he broke in, steel in his tone. "Teyla Emmagan is a vital part of this team and you will respect that, Corporal."

  "I don't doubt it, sir. It's just that... Well, are we going to have to jump every time she talks in her sleep?"

  Sheppard gave Clarke a penetrating look. "Just so we're clear on this. Teyla's `gift' may be the very thing that keeps us alive when the Wraith come calling. If she has something to say, you listen. Get me?"

  Clarke stiffened. "Sir, yes sir. Didn't mean to cast aspersions, sir."

  John sighed. "Look, I know it's not conventional intel, but nothing out here is conventional." He smiled a little. "That ought to be the motto of Stargate Command."

  "You're telling us," said Hill in a low voice.

  Mason threw a nod at the door that led out of the guest quarters. "I've set up a two-point watch rotation, sir. If anything else... unconventional happens, we'll be ready."

  Sheppard nodded. "I'll take the first shift, Staff Sergeant. Now I'm awake, might as well make the most of it."

  "I'll join you," said Ronon. "Can't sleep on beds that soft anyhow."

  John shrugged as they walked away. "If we ask the Magnate nicely, I'm sure he'd find a big rock for you, or something."

  Dex was silent for a moment. "Clarke had a point. About Teyla."

  "Yeah," agreed the colonel, "but I trust her. We know the locals planned to bring the Wraith they captured on M3Y-465 back through the Gate. Could be them she's sensing."

  "What if there's more to it?"

  "Now that..." Sheppard frowned. "That's a different question."

  McKay leaned back from the eyepiece of the massive telescope and a glimmer of amazement crossed his expression. "I apologize," he said, half-turning to look at Kelfer and Lady Erony. "Obviously, it was impolite of me to suggest that you didn't know how to take the lens cap off your own telescope. I see that now..." Down below on the lower level, McKay could see Private Bishop, nibbling from a ration bar and generally looking a bit bored. Sheppard had, of course, insisted he take an escort with him; not that he thought he couldn't handle someone so clearly as stolid as the Magnate's chief scientist.

  "It was an honest mistake," said Kelfer, wearing a forced smile. "An error that any new visitor to our planet could have made."

  "Yes..." Rodney looked along the length of the device, out through the oval portal in the observatory's dome to the night sky beyond. The firmament up there was black as coal, and of course, naturally he had just assumed that it was due to light pollution from the city masking out all of the weaker stars. But when he peered through the optics and saw the same flat black ness, McKay's first reaction was to suggest the telescope was broken. I mean, no stars at all? How likely was that
?

  In fact there were some faint suns out there, but hardly any. The sights that hove into view as they swung the observatory dome around were mostly the planets in the stellar shallows orbiting Halcyon's yellow star, gas giants and lifeless balls of ice and rock.

  "In the southern hemisphere," Erony was saying, "the sky looks very different. There is a band of stars crossing the sky from horizon to horizon. Our forefathers called the constellation the White River."

  McKay stepped down from the observation chair and worked at the portable computer he had brought with him. "We must be right out on the edge," he said, thinking aloud. Before visiting the observatory, Erony had taken him on a walk through a library in the heart of the palace, past racks of scrolls veiled in cobwebs. He'd only had time to look over a few of them, a handful of historical tracts and yellowed charts of the skies. "If those stellar maps you showed me were accurate, then we can deduce the location of Halcyon in physical space and its relative distance from Atlantis..."

  "To what end?" said Kelfer.

  McKay hesitated. "To, uh, gain an idea of how the Pegasus Galaxy is structured..." The device beeped and presented a wire frame graphic of the galactic disc. "Do you see here?" He pointed as the image zoomed in toward the very tip of a feathery limb of star-stuff. "This solar system is on the end of a spiral arm. You're in the interstellar equivalent of the boondocks!" Rodney smirked at his own joke.

  "Boohn-dox?" repeated the scientist. "I don't know this term."

  McKay's gag fell flat and he moved on. "Halcyon is on the very edge of the Stargate network built by the Ancients... The, ah, Precursors. That place where you keep the Gate? When someone named it the Terminal, they weren't far wrong. If you think of the Stargates in the same terms as your monorails, then this planet is at the end of the line!"

  "Are you making light of us?" said Erony gently. "I assure you, Dr. McKay, Halcyon is anything but a parochial outpost."

  "No, no," Rodney insisted, back-pedaling a little. "I was just using a metaphor. Bad choice. Sorry." He tapped a finger on his lips. "This opens up a lot of possibilities about Gate travel here, the pattern of the network. A portal this far out from the main concentration of inhabited worlds could mean we'd see a similar spread of Stargates to those in our own galaxy... I mean, my galaxy, Earth's galaxy..."

  Kelfer gave a derisive snort. "Your Earth is in another galaxy? Impossible. The power to translate across extragalactic distances would be incalculable!"

  McKay gave the other man a sideways look. "You think so?"

  "Of course!" Kelfer replied hotly. "The magnitude of energy would be greater than the detonation of an exploding star! No science could create a mechanism to contain such intensity."

  It dawned on Rodney that Kelfer, for all his high title and impressive clothes, was narrow-minded and not in the market for challenging viewpoints. Moreover, his statement made it clear that the Halcyon scientist had never even conceived of something like a Zero Point Module.

  "No science?" McKay repeated. "Not even that of the Precursors?"

  Kelfer snorted again. "I admit the Great Circlet is a masterpiece of technology, but not even the builders of that device could do such a thing. They were mortal beings, after all, not gods."

  "Depends on your definition..." said Rodney, half to himself.

  "It pleases me that you have found such food for thought here, Doctor," said Erony with a smile. Her eyes flashed as she met his gaze and something in her look make him swallow hard. She continued; "I must admit, I find this intellectual discussion to be most stimulating. Sadly, there is precious little opportunity for the scientific disciplines that do not directly impact upon Halcyon's martial or industrial might."

  "No doubt," McKay nodded. He had noted on the way in to the observatory that the facility was dusty with age and showed little signs of regular use. "Astronomy isn't much help when you're building weapons, I suppose."

  "Quite so," agreed Kelfer, completely missing the irony. "It is the duty of every learned person in our society to work toward keeping our planet strong and maintaining our superiority over the Wraith."

  "Hmm. Well, your `superiority'?" Rodney made quote marks with his fingers. "I think that may have more to do with your astro-geographical location than how big your guns are."

  Kelfer sneered. "This is another one of your theories, outworlder?"

  McKay gave a thin smile. "Trust me, Kelfer, after a while most people catch up to the fact that my theories and the truth are the same thing..." He paused, the smile faltering. "Well, most of the time they are. But anyway. I'm willing to bet that the reason your planet has been free of Wraith attacks is because of its remoteness, galactically speaking, in relation to Wraith territory."

  "Pah!" spat the scientist, his ire building. "I will not hear you disparage our military in such a fashion! The Halcyons are formidable warriors with a reputation that strides the stars! We are the ones who give them nightmares!" Kelfer stalked away, out on to the balcony around the dome, fuming and muttering.

  "It's always nice to meet someone with an open mind," said McKay.

  "I could not agree more." The silky tone in Erony's words made Rodney's mouth turn arid. "You are a most interesting man, Dr. Rodney McKay. I wonder, is there anything else you might like to observe this evening?"

  "Oh," He was suddenly at a loss for words. "Um." But that was hardly surprising. It wasn't every day a princess came on to him. "The dolmen?" The question came out in a squeak.

  Erony seemed crestfallen for an instant, but then the flash of disappointment was gone. "Of course. I have petitioned my father on your behalf. As the site is of great significance to our people, he must personally approve your request to visit it. I imagine he will give you an answer in a few days."

  "Great," Rodney replied. "Phew. Well. It's been a long day. Perhaps we should get to bed." He blinked. "I mean, I should get to bed. To the quarters. To rest."

  She gave a gracious nod. "Of course. Please, follow me. I'll show you back to your associates."

  Private Bishop rolled his eyes as he caught up with McKay. "Smooth, Rodders. Very smooth."

  "Shut up," he hissed, and kept walking.

  Sheppard leaned against the stone balustrade and took in the view. The air out here had turned chilly after sunset, so he had put his jacket back on. The P90 and the rest of his gear were back in his room, but he had his service pistol on him, just in case. The colonel couldn't shake the cautious feeling that was gathering at the nape of his neck, the slight warning tingle that made his fingers drum on the carved marble.

  Hell, who am I kidding? He asked himself. I am way outside my comfort zone here. Sheppard was too much a soldier to ever get used to the mix of outward smiles and inward suspicions that this whole diplomatic, first contact thing involved.

  A figure emerged through the heavy curtains from the anteroom. Teyla nodded to him as she approached. "Colonel."

  She looked better and he was pleased to see it. The sallow, frightened expression on her face in the bedroom was so at odds with the casual confidence the Athosian woman usually displayed, it had concerned him. "How're you feeling?"

  Teyla frowned. "Sleep eludes me for the moment. Perhaps it is for the best." She paused. "I have not sensed the Wraith again, Colonel."

  "I wasn't asking as your commanding officer, I was asking as your friend," he replied. "I know it's hard on you."

  She nodded. "Yes. Thank you, John. I appreciate your concern." Teyla gave him an appraising look. "And how do you feel?"

  Sheppard gave a half-smile. "Just peachy."

  "I do not envy your role in this," Teyla admitted. "The directness of battle is far more desirable to me than the courtly wordgames of these aristocrats."

  "Ah, you know how it is. Rich folks are different to ordinary Joes like you and me."

  "They are polite, but... I think they may privately see us as their inferiors."

  Sheppard nodded. "You got that too, huh? Well, this is their planet, and they do have
a big huge palace. I guess if you're going to throw your weight around, a palace would be the place to do it in."

  "But their arrogance towards the Wraith concerns me, John. And there is also the issue of the prisoners we saw them take on M3Y-465. Lord Daus never answered my question."

  John tapped the stones. "Could be they're going to interrogate them, but then we know from experience that kinda thing yields mixed results at best."

  "There is another possibility. The Halcyons may be harvesting the enzymes in their feeding sacs."

  Sheppard's eyes narrowed as he considered that. Unbidden, thoughts of his friend Aiden Ford rose to the front of his mind; he recalled the young Lieutenant when they embarked from Stargate Command on the first trip to Atlantis, the eagerness in his face-and then he remembered the changes in him after the Wraith assault that nearly cost Aiden his life, the single dark eye that now disfigured him, the legacy of the changes the alien forced upon the young man. He was convinced Ford was still out there somewhere, too cunning to die easily, his heart pumping with doses of the mutagenic Wraith biochemical. Stronger, wilder, out of control. The idea that people might willingly be harvesting the narcotic fluids of the Wraith filled him with dread. "The thought had crossed my mind. We're going to have to find out what's up with that before we open any real dealings between Halcyon and Atlantis."

  They were both quiet for a moment. Teyla looked out over the cityscape beneath them. "This citadel is built on the tallest part of the landscape in this area. The Magnate has made sure that everyone below in the city understands who rules them. They only need to look upward."

  Sheppard followed her gaze. "I get the feeling they're only showing us what they think we need to see." He nodded at the city sprawl radiating away from the palace, the lights in the streets far below and the grim clusters of buildings. "I'd like to peek behind the curtain..." The colonel broke off. He heard a voice from the anteroom and realized that McKay had returned.

  "Thanks again," said Rodney, ignoring the smirk on Bishop's face, and he gave Erony a small wave, unsure if it was correct protocol to bow or shake hands. For her part, the noblewoman inclined her head. They had left Kelfer behind, the scientist making excuses about `vital work' requiring his attention, but in truth McKay suspected it was the building dislike between them that drove the other man away; which was fine. Rodney wouldn't miss him.