SGA - 14 - Death Game (19 page)

And then in the ruins of Emege a young man came up, and his name was Arda. “I have been their prisoner,” he said. “I have stood in the feeding pens of the Great Armada, and have returned to tell of it. Death was slain by the power of the Ancestors, but in doing so it has taken all their power and virtue from The World That Is. They are gone, and they will never return. It is of no use to plead for them. We speak to a dead gate, and the waves that reached up and consumed Death have also swallowed them. We are alone, the last children, all that is left.”

“I have stood in the feeding pens,” he said, “and they have released us, for they are glutted on our brothers. They have put us out to pasture, as a man will let his flocks run loose to forage when their fodder is too expensive, knowing that he can always round them up again later, when he is hungry. What use to keep us aboard their ships, more than their chambers can hold, when left to ourselves we will forage? We can always be hunted at will.”

And at that the Last wept, knowing they were the last people in the world, and in time they too would be hunted.

“Do not despair,” Arda said. “They will not come here again for a long time, for even evil must sleep, and when they do we will be ready for them. The Ancestors are gone, and their magic and virtue. Now we live in the world of men. But men will not prove so weak as the Wraith may think.”

And they said to him, “If the Ancestors could not prevail, with their might and wisdom, surely we have nothing? Surely we are kine who will be harvested in our time.”

Arda spoke again, and his words were hard and true. “Does it not come to every man, that in time his mother is gone from him? When we are children we cling to her skirts and seek her for every good thing. She is our happiness, and without her we will starve or die of cold. Every man is born of woman, and we need her with all our strength. But to each of us comes a time, late or soon, when his mother is gone. Sometimes it is that death takes her soon, leaving us mewling and weak, hoping that some other will take us in and care for us. Sometimes it is that death waits, and our grandchildren sit on her knees when, honored, she passes into that night with her century. But sooner or later, every man stands alone. Sooner or later, his mother cannot save him. The Ancestors are gone, as a mother from us all. We must stand like men, like men and women of good age who are bereft but not cowed. We are not infants who will die without her touch! We are not crawling children, who do not know right from wrong! We are youths, perhaps, who should have known her wisdom and care for many years, but who must stand as men even before our time. And stand we shall.”

And so we did. In time, the towers of Emege again pointed to the sky. In time, her streets lived again, and lights blossomed behind the windows of her houses. The Wraith slept. Two generations passed before they came again, and then three before the next time. Sometimes as much as a century passes between Cullings. Sometimes it is only a few years. Sometimes the Cullings are light, a Dart or two through the Ring, a dozen people lost. Sometimes thousands die, cities falling in flame and sorrow.

But always we know this—this is the age of men. We live, and living hope. Our mothers cannot save us. The Ancestors will never return. The world is what we make of it.

And in that some of us find nothing. That which will be, will be. There is little point in striving, if our efforts will be brought to nothing. And some of us find instead hope. We are not weaker than the Wraith, nor stupider. In time, we will find a way, for everything there is under the sun changes.

That is the story as I learned it, but now I will tell you another. Stories are truth. Stories are life. This is the story Elizabeth Weir told me, and in it she adds another thread to the loom.

Once there were a beleaguered people, forced back and back and back by the Wraith, their warships lost, their numbers trimmed to the bone. Once, the Ancestors submerged their city beneath the sea, that they might stand a little while longer as the last of their kind. Once, they listened to the last of their transports destroyed, their kin screaming their last breaths into vacuum, and they knew they were alone. They could not save their children. They could not save themselves.

Their story ends, as stories do, in the blue flare of a gate. They left their city to sleep beneath the sea and walked through a gate with their children and their bundles, with their parents and foodstuffs for the journey. They walked through a gate.

They walked into your world, into the light of your sun, with their children and their bundles, their parents and their stories. They came to places familiar and strange, and they walked the lands of your world as the last of their kind, the elder children of time.

And where they went, stories followed them. They taught men to build and taught them to govern, and here and there they left something else, for they were not so different from us. They left their cast of face, the shape of their hands, a river of blue-black hair, a pair of green eyes. They dwindled and they vanished, leaving mystery behind.

The story begins, as all stories begin, in the blue fire of a gate. There was a chair beneath the ice, and she woke at her son’s touch. There was a city beneath the sea, and she came to life when her son called her. All that ever was, still is. All that may be, yet may be.

As orphans separated by tragedy and war seek each other across the decades, so we seek each other now, your people and mine, brothers and sisters, children of the Ancestors.

So I believe.

***

Silence fell, all the darker for the visions conjured by her voice. For a moment John had almost seen it, the Giza gate open in hot sun, the Ancients stepping through with their parcels and their sleeping infants, glancing behind as though they could see what they left. They stood in his world, not at the end of their story, but at the beginning of his history.

Once, in the Neolithic, some farmers along the Nile became what we call the Nagada culture. The first line in the textbook, the first slide in the presentation, the opening credits of the documentary.

They came from this gateroom, walked through his gate, leaving Elizabeth to cover the consoles carefully with plastic, and walked into his world as exiles. They left the systems on standby, powered down instead of destroying the city, because like Teyla’s people they hoped.

They hoped that sometime their children would walk back through that door.

“Hope is the White Bird,” Teyla said. “And her wings beat with unbearable strength.”

“Yeah,” John said, and squeezed her hand in the dark. White snowfields of Antarctica and the chair glittering like polished glass, a tossed coin rising in the air and flashing as it fell. He had no words for this thing. He was not like Teyla or Elizabeth, who could conjure visions in the dark, make people believe the impossible. But he saw it. He understood, her warm hand clasped in his. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” John said, and hoped that made sense.

“No,” she said. “It never does.”

Chapter Twenty

To the north out to sea there were spectacular crashing thunderstorms, but here the skies were clear. Carson Beckett set the jumper down lightly among the dunes along the beach, where a narrow belt of seagrass separated ocean from desert. He cut the power, letting the lights dim to board and emergency lights, and sighed. “We need to talk about this,” he said.

Rodney rubbed his forehead. “There isn’t anything to talk about, Carson! We keep looking until we find them.”

“We can’t search the whole bloody planet!”

“Yes, we can!” Rodney shouted. “And we’re going to until we find them.”

Major Lorne stepped up, standing behind Rodney in the copilot’s seat. “Look,” he said. “We’re not giving up yet. But we’ve got to think this through. Dr. McKay, we’ve been at this more than 48 hours. This is the third night with no sleep for you and me. We’re making mistakes. We’re not making sense. If we keep this up we’re going to fly right over them and miss them, or botch the search and have to cover ground we’ve already covered. We can’t search through the night.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Rodney snapped. “Just go home?”

“That we go back through the gate, switch out for Dr. Kusanagi flying the jumper with Cadman and a second team on board, and the rest of us stand down for ten hours. Dr. McKay, you’ve been going for three days. That’s about the limit.” Lorne put his hand on the back of the chair. “We’re not going to find them by wearing ourselves out and crashing this jumper.”

“Dr. Kusanagi? Please! She’s no pilot,” Rodney scoffed.

“Neither am I,” Carson said. “But nobody seems to remember that. Miko does all right.” He looked at Rodney, his face uplit by the board, dark circles under his eyes. “Rodney, be reasonable. We’ll do a better job coming back fresh in ten hours.”

Rodney closed his eyes. Going back through the gate felt like defeat. It felt like giving them up, abandoning them. They’d never give up on him. When he and Elizabeth had been the prisoners of the Genii leader Kolya during the storm, Sheppard hadn’t even considered ditching him.

And yet he knew he was exhausted. Even with the handy stimulants Major Lorne had asked Dr. Beckett for, he knew he was just about at the limit. This was the point where the mind started to play tricks.

“Ten hours,” Carson said. “Do I need to make it a medical stand down?”

Last year he would have battled it out with Carson, but that was before he’d seen quite so much of other planets. Before he’d been nearly killed quite so many times. This was not a piece of cake, and a mistake could doom his team. Rodney swallowed. Carson was probably right. Rodney shook his head. “No. Back to the gate, people. Let’s radio ahead and tell Kusanagi to get her butt in gear.”

“Cadman, you’ll lead a fresh team,” Lorne said. “You’ve had some sleep in the back, right?”

“I’m good, sir,” Cadman said brightly. “And I’ve been watching the grid. Dr. Kusanagi and I will stick to the grid and report in every hour.”

“That way we’ll keep covering ground,” Lorne said. “And you guys may find them. We’ve covered the entire length of the canal from the crash site to the ocean. It’s time to start expanding the circle. Center on the crash site and make sweeps out at twenty kilometer increments. That ought to get a couple hundred miles out before we relieve you again in the morning.”

“Will do, sir,” Cadman said.

Carson eased the jumper back into the air again, the minutes elongating over the desert in swift flight. When Rodney dialed the gate, the flash of blue fire was visible for miles. It should have been welcoming, but to Rodney it was defeat. I’ll be back, he promised silently. I will be.

***

It seemed like centuries before Ronon returned, but according to Radek’s watch it was only an hour and twelve minutes. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but Radek was soaked to the skin and long since past wishing for a warm fire or a hot bath. A warm fire seemed likelier, but probably still out of reach.

Ronon walked casually around the edge of a building. He knew better than to creep when such would seem more alarming than simply strolling. The city was full of strangers who might be abroad, but only thieves would be sneaking. “Come on,” he said.

“Come where?”

“Come on.” Ronon disappeared back around the corner of the building, and throwing his hands up in the air, Radek followed.

“Would you care to tell me where we are going?” he hissed.

“This way.” They made their way along the slick streets, dark between the buildings. There were of course no modern streetlights, and only the occasional lit window provided any light outside. The pavers were as uneven as those he’d grown up with in the old parts of cities not wrecked by war, and he liked them no better here than there. They were a pain in the behind quite literally on a motorcycle. He’d skidded into a signpost in rain like this, in Old Town Prague, and torn a ligament in his knee that kept him on crutches for a month.

It was full of these cheerful thoughts that he almost ran into Ronon when he stopped and eased a door open. From within came the distinct smell of goats.

“Lovely,” Radek said.

Ronon ducked in and Radek followed, pulling the door shut behind him.

“I found this place,” Ronon said. “I think the people in the house are gone. The goats are gone. So it’s a good place for us to hole up for a few hours.” It was dark, but Radek could hear the sound of Ronon moving around.

“It is dry,” Radek said optimistically. And if no goats were currently in residence that could only be to the good.

Some dim light came in from a window in the back, showing hay and a coil of rope on the wall, a trough containing stale water.

Ronon sat down on one of the bales of hay. “Here,” he said, reaching under his coat. “I found us some food.”

“As in stole?”

Ronon shrugged. There was half a loaf of brown bread and what seemed to be four hardboiled eggs.

That was not too bad after all. It wasn’t as though he were likely to steal a bowl of stew.

Ronon handed over two of the eggs very fairly, and Radek sat down beside him and began peeling one of them. It really did smell amazingly good, and it tasted even better.

“I found Sheppard and Teyla,” Radek said.

Ronon looked up and blinked. “What?”

“While you were scouting,” Radek said with some satisfaction. “They were prisoners. They were being escorted into the palace under heavy guard. Their hands were tied, but they did not seem injured. Teyla saw me, and I am almost certain that she recognized me. They know we are here.”

“How many men?” Ronon asked, tearing off a chunk of bread and passing the rest to Radek.

“Eight,” he replied. “They were going in the main entrance very heavily guarded. Perhaps they had tried to escape.”

“I would have.” Ronon bit off a bite. “Wish we knew where they were held.”

“I could hardly follow them in,” Radek pointed out. “I thought it best to wait and tell you.”

“Yeah.” Ronon pushed a sodden braid back out of his eyes and nodded thoughtfully. “It doesn’t matter where they’re held tonight. We know where they’re going to be tomorrow. I found the exit from the maze and checked it out.”

Radek leaned back on the hay. It was nice and dry in here. “So what do we have?”

“There’s a courtyard in front of it but no seats. Pretty strange, because you’d think people would want to sit and see the winners come out.”

“Unless they are watching from somewhere else,” Radek said. “As you pointed out before. Which suggests something very strange is going on here.”

“Yeah. The entrance itself is just an archway. There are two guards there now, but they weren’t standing outside or anything. They were sitting inside playing a dice game.” Ronon shrugged. “Not a big thing, to stand in the pouring rain, guarding an empty room. No wonder they’re slacking. I couldn’t see very far inside, but it seemed like there was a complex—a bunch of tunnels running in various directions.”

“It’s a maze,” Radek said. “We expect that.”

“Yeah, but did we expect power cables?” Ronon paused to let that sink in. “There were a bunch of power cables running along the ceiling. They’ve got microphones or video or something in there.”

“Which means there is something we can use,” Radek said thoughtfully. Power cables meant a power source. And any power source could be a source of trouble in his hands.

“So here’s the plan. We go down an hour before dawn and slip in. If the guards are outside, I’ll take care of them. If not, we just get past them and get inside. Then we figure out what’s going on, grab Sheppard and Teyla, and get out of here.”

“That works,” Radek said. “But first we get some rest, yes?”

“Yeah.” Ronon settled back in the hay. “Didn’t get any sleep last night hanging on to an overturned boat. We can get a few hours now and be rested when we go in before dawn.” He looked over at Radek, who was contemplating his second egg. “Better than the boat.”

“Here.” Radek handed the egg back.

Ronon looked at it but didn’t take it.

“Go on,” he said. “You are much bigger than me. I have one egg and some bread, you have three and some bread. It is fair.”

“Ok.” Ronon took it back and started to peel it thoughtfully.

Radek burrowed down in the hay, though his stomach still growled. Tomorrow they would rescue Sheppard and Teyla. And then what? He shoved that thought back down. Perhaps Sheppard would have some ideas. He usually did.

***

Rodney awoke in darkness, struggling up from dreams that vanished even as he grabbed at them. Just as well, really. He probably didn’t want them. Rodney groaned, rolling over and looking at the clock. He’d slept just over three hours.

Great. Six more hours of the stand down. He should sleep more. He should sleep. That’s what he was here to do. Sleep. In and out. Breathing. Sleeping.

Only not. He was wide awake, his blood surging with adrenaline to run away from something that only existed in his dream. When he needed to sleep. Because it was important for him to sleep. So that tomorrow he could go save everybody from whatever it was they’d gotten themselves into this time.

Not really tomorrow. It was a little after 9 am, Atlantis time. Days and nights didn’t match where he’d spent the last three days. Sleep. He needed to sleep. He was supposed to be sleeping. Because later today he’d have to be brilliant.

He should think about something nice. Not sheep. Sheep weren’t nice. Sheep were dirty, smelly and stupid, three things he didn’t like. He should think about something that wasn’t dirty, smelly or stupid.

Sam Carter came to mind. She was neither dirty, smelly nor stupid. Ok, perhaps there had been occasions in the past in the field when she had been dirty and smelly, but she was never stupid. And when he’d last seen her she’d been reasonably well washed.

***

“Do you want the Lost City?”

Rodney blinked at her. “Huh?” he said. She wore an oversized black t-shirt with drab BDUs, and somehow the effect was pretty stunning.

Stunning in the sense of she’d like to shoot him with a zat gun. She looked irritated. “I said, do you want the Lost City? Dr. Weir is going to be heading up a team that looks at the feasibility of an expedition to the Lost City of the Ancients, based on the information recovered from the Antarctic outpost. Are you interested in being on her team?”

Rodney straightened up, putting his laptop on the desk in front of him. “This is another excuse to send me somewhere other than the SGC, isn’t it?”

Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you had me sent to Siberia for six months? To go be a special liaison to the Russian program? Maybe because of that?” Rodney snapped. “Now you want to send me to Antarctica? I think you just can’t deal with the competition around here.”

Her arms came up, crossing over her chest. “You can think that if you like,” Sam said. “I was actually trying to do you a favor. Dr. Weir’s expedition may not pan out, but if it does you’d be the chief scientist on what might turn out to be the most exciting voyage of discovery that mankind has ever attempted. At least that people from Earth have ever attempted,” she amended. “But don’t let that get in the way of your ego. Of course I’m just trying to get rid of you because I think you’re going to upstage me somehow.” She turned to leave. “Never mind. Forget I said anything, McKay. I’m sure there are plenty of other people who’d be happy to do it. I’ll just call Dr. Weir and Dr. Jackson and tell them you’re not interested.”

“Wait wait wait.” Rodney hurried around the desk to get in front of her at the door. “Dr. Jackson?”

“Dr. Jackson is in Antarctica right now working on the Ancient database, since he has the most complete reading knowledge of Ancient on Earth. He thinks that he may be able to derive a gate address soon, but of course he’s not a scientist. He’s having a great deal of trouble with the technology. But if you’re not interested, I’m sure that General O’Neill can find someone…”

“Who knows more about Ancient technology than I do?” Rodney gave her a jaunty smile. “Wrong. There’s only one person on the planet who knows more about Ancient technology than I do.”

“Me,” Sam said, uncrossing her arms.

“Actually, I meant General O’Neill, but he’s probably forgotten it again,” Rodney said quickly.

“Are you interested or not?” she asked. “Because if you’re not up for it, that’s ok.”

Rodney gave her his most charming smile. “If Dr. Jackson is having trouble with the Ancient technology, I’m sure I can give him a hand.” That was smart. After all, Dr. Jackson was a good friend of hers. She might appreciate him playing nice. Jackson was just a social scientist, and couldn’t be expected to figure out anything complicated. “So,” Rodney said, “How about dinner tomorrow night? We could grab a bite after work…”

“I’m engaged,” Sam said shortly.

“Ok. How about Wednesday, then? Wednesday would work for me.”