STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) (23 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” she said.

Todd led her through the twisting corridors of his hive, still enough of a labyrinth after several days that she would have been hopelessly lost alone. She suspected that it hadn’t remained entirely unchanged, anyway; more than once she’d thought she caught walls shifting out of the corner of her eye. The room he took her to looked a lot like the one where she’d first met with him, the first time she’d ever seen a hive ship or been up close with a Wraith. It seemed like a thousand years ago.

He sat with her and must have called telepathically for food, because after a moment, a drone came in with a tray. The food was only fruit, but at this point in the day she was happy to see it, and there was a cup that when she took a cautious sip contained water, flat and entirely tasteless. She wondered if the ship distilled it somehow, if she was drinking part of what ran through the ship’s veins.

“Thank you, Todd,” she said, and then realized that couldn’t be his actual name. Colonel Sheppard had started calling him that, because none of the Wraith had ever given them a name, or been willing to speak to them much at all. “Your name’s not really ‘Todd,’ is it?”

In the dim light, the star-shaped tattoo stood out in sharp contrast to his skin, and his eyes seemed to flicker as he moved and the light shifted, like golden embers from a flame. Rodney had eyes like these, now. He tilted his head, hair spilling over his shoulder, a trail of silver against the dark leather. “It is not.”

She wasn’t sure if his lack of elaboration was simply a statement of fact, or an indicator that he didn’t want to have this conversation with her. Talking with Todd about anything except their research made her feel all too sharply how alien they were to each other. “You do have them, though, right? Individual names?”

Jennifer wondered for a moment if the question was somehow offensive, but Todd barked a laugh, showing sharp teeth. “We do, little one,” he said. “All of the thousands of Wraith who live, each of us has our own name, and a name for our lineage, and our ships have names, and our planets. We are not nameless beasts.”

She looked at him, his face still again, his features standing out sharp in the dim light. “So, what is your real name?” she asked. “I’d rather not keep calling you Todd if there’s something that would be more polite.”

Todd frowned. “That...is a harder question than you realize. A Wraith is named from the shape, the sense of his mind. The images and sensations others feel when they speak to him. It is a difficult thing to capture in a word.”

She nodded. “So, not like us, then. Not just a name that really doesn’t mean anything, like Jennifer.”

He looked confused. “But your name has meaning, does it not? Pale, or perhaps fair. Fair One is how you are known to us.”

“I — ” Somewhere between flattered and bemused, it took her a moment to get it. “That’s what my name means, but it’s not why I was given it. I mean, I was born in 1981. There were two other Jennifers in my class.”

“Ah.” Somehow, she thought he seemed offended by that idea. “Yes, I suppose we are quite different.”

“Still,” she said, reaching out impulsively to touch his sleeve, as if he were a patient. Establishing rapport, that was what they’d called it in med school. “If you can say that you call me ‘Fair One,’ there has to be a way for you to tell me your name, right? Something that sort of sums the telepathic stuff up.”

He stared at her hand, looking white and washed-out against the black leather, then at her face, strangely and deep, as if seeing her for the first time. “My name,” he said at last, “my name is one who goes alone, ahead. One who is sure-footed and certain, capable of finding a way for others who follow behind. Leader might come close, but not a ruler.”

“Scout?” Jennifer tried, but he shook his head.

“No, for a scout is solitary, but I am...” He freed his sleeve from her hand, his own fingers moving on the table, as if trying to find the shape of something. “Guide. Guide is what you may call me.” The smile he gave her was sharp and strange for a moment. “I give you my true name, Fair One.”

“Guide,” she repeated, and tried to smile in return.

The conference room at Homeworld Command was once again in use by the IOA.

“Dr. Daniel Jackson.” S.R. Desai steepled his hands thoughtfully. “That is different.”

“I thought you might think so,” Jack O’Neill said.

“He is one of the best of the best,” Konstantin Nechayev said, nodding seriously. “I must say that my government would strongly support Dr. Jackson as head of the Atlantis expedition. We have worked with him for many years, and he impressed us a great deal when he assisted us in the matter of our development of gate technology some years ago. A man of towering intellect!”

Jack gave him a look as if to say, don’t overdo it.

“That he is,” Desai agreed. “With the kind of broad humanist perspective the job demands. Which,” he shrugged, “has been sadly lacking since Dr. Weir’s death. I think Dr. Jackson is an excellent candidate.”

Shen and Strom alike looked speechless.

“I do not know Dr. Jackson personally,” Aurelia Dixon-Smythe said, glancing over the curriculum vitae before her. “But unless the PM has some objection, he seems a reasonable choice.”

“SG-1,” Strom said, making it seem like some sort of epithet. “Dr. Jackson has a long history.”

Nechayev beamed. “He does indeed. If I understand your position
correctly, Mr. Strom, it is the position of your president that the head of the Atlantis position must go to an American. Understandable. You are paying the bills, and so you expect to call the shots, to put it bluntly. Some of our other esteemed colleagues are determined that it should not be a member of the military. I, myself, had no objection to Colonel Carter, and voted against her replacement as you may recall. So. Name me an American more qualified than Dr. Daniel Jackson.” He looked around the table with a smile.

“Jackson is…” Shen began, and then lapsed into silence. Whatever he was, it could not be summed up immediately.

Dick Woolsey opened and closed his mouth. He didn’t look at Jack, and for a second Jack felt sorry for him. But this was just like the business with the Replicators. Dick had to play this naturally.

Nechayev was doing the heavy lifting as he’d promised. “I am very pleased with this suggestion,” he said into the silence. “Very pleased indeed. I know that the President had the warmest possible feelings toward Dr. Jackson after the incident where he assisted Dr. Markova. His personal thanks, as I recall.”

Desai’s brows twitched. He knew this was a set up, but he also knew Jackson. “I think this is certainly an avenue we should explore,” he said.

LaPierre looked entirely blindsided and glanced at Nechayev with scarcely concealed astonishment. “I thought a few years ago you wanted to execute him?”

Nechayev shrugged. “That was when he had been compromised by the Ori. Obviously that situation resolved itself.”

“You mean I resolved it,” Woolsey said.

“If you consider allowing yourself to be overpowered and transported away while the prisoner stole a starship to be resolving it? Yes,” Nechayev said. “Come now, Mr. Woolsey. Your interactions have not always been successful, or in fact competent. Allowing yourself to be captured by the Replicators?”

“That was…”

“Unavoidable, yes.” Nechayev waved a hand. “And yet the fact remains that you, and Mr. Strom, and Ms. Shen, and some of our predecessors who are no longer part of this body, decided on a disastrous course that nearly lost us not only Atlantis but also nearly caused a Replicator invasion of Earth. Had Atlantis remained under military control…”

“Now also recall I opposed that decision bitterly,” LaPierre put in. “As did Mr. Desai.”

“Yes, it was the three of us,” Nechayev agreed. “I do not recall, what was your role in that, General O’Neill?” He all but winked at Jack.

Jack looked as innocent as possible. “Me? I nearly got nuked. Oh, and then we defeated the Replicators and took back the city.”

Roy Martin, the new American representative, choked on his coffee. “You, personally, General?”

“Me, Dr. Weir, Colonel Sheppard and his team,” Jack said. “With the invaluable contributions of Mr. Woolsey, who volunteered to be interrogated by the Replicators in order to give them false information.”

Woolsey looked at him sharply, and Jack saw understanding dawn. Daniel Jackson was a poison pill, and a sufficiently plausible one that Woolsey’s detractors would panic.

“Very admirable, Mr. Woolsey,” Martin said.

Woolsey did his best to look modest. “Thank you, Senator.”

“Dick never asks someone under his command to do something he wouldn’t do himself,” Jack said smoothly. “He’s a hands on kind of guy.”

“Even when that means being interrogated by the enemy?” Martin’s eyebrows rose.

“I, um,” Woolsey began.

“He’s very modest about his role in it,” Jack said. “But I can’t say there is anybody in the world I would rather have had in that cell with me.” A lot of people he would rather have had out of it, but that was beside the point. Why Sheppard couldn’t have brought Sam and Daniel and Teal’c along was beyond him. The more the merrier.

“I see that it’s nearly two o’clock,” Shen said. “And unfortunately I have another meeting this afternoon. If we might try to end on time?”

Bingo, Jack thought. Poison pill swallowed. Let’s pull the plug.

Desai frowned. “It’s only quarter till…”

“We must respect Ms. Shen’s time constraints,” Strom said quickly. “I think that we should go ahead and recess on that note rather than moving on to the next agenda item. Does next Thursday suit you all?”

“I don’t know yet,” Dixon-Smythe said. “I’ll have my assistant contact you.”

“I don’t know either,” LaPierre said.

Nechayev smiled expansively. “I am at your disposal at any time.”

He was
beginning to think he should plan his own rescue — maybe steal a Dart, or, since he wasn’t sure he could actually fly one, maybe a lifepod, they were designed for incapacitated passengers. He was fairly sure he’d located the ones nearest his own lab, and he kept track of when the hive came into orbit around a habitable planet. Like now: they had stopped to Cull, on a world with a Stargate and a reasonably large population — except he could imagine himself landing, and then what? He’d have to dial out — not to Atlantis directly, that would be too risky, because he’d have to spend time convincing them he was himself, and not a trick, so to some safer world where Sheppard could meet him — if he’d go for that again, after the last time. Not to mention all the people who’d be trying to kill a lone Wraith… Maybe New Athos? He could dial that address in his sleep, and he could probably convince Halling not to kill him right away. Maybe he could say he had a message from Todd? There was a certain perverse irony in that.

Except that he was never alone. Not that Ember had ever left him for very long, and why he hadn’t noticed that until now, he couldn’t have said, but now either Nighthaze or Heedless was in constant attendance. Heedless was Nighthaze’s chief assistant, whose tone of mind was strangely sober for such a name — but then Rodney overheard some of the other clevermen joking about the number of times Heedless had regrown fingers in the wake of his experiments, and thought he understood. Wraith humor wasn’t all that different from, say, Marine humor, when you came right down to it. If one of them had ever left him, he might have been tempted to try it, although he knew that failure meant not only that he’d be killed, but that in the process the Wraith would learn everything he’d been trying to keep from them. And that, he realized, was the key. If Sheppard didn’t come, he would not only have to escape, but he would have to do it perfectly the first time. Or die trying.

The thought was like a blow, and he glared at his screen, at the golden waterfall of data, as though it could somehow help. Succeed or make sure he died: that was the sort of thing Sheppard would say, or Ronon. He was the one who found ways to survive…

*Dice you for your thoughts,* Nighthaze said, and Rodney bared teeth at him.

*I am thinking that we have taken a wrong turn. As I told you two days ago.* One of the watching clevermen snarled at that, but Rodney ignored him. *I need to think. I’m going back to my quarters.*

*I will go with you,* Heedless said.

*No, no,* Rodney answered. *Continue your work.*

Heedless and Nighthaze exchanged a quick glance, and then Heedless dipped his head. *Your pardon,* he said, *but the Old One has given orders…*

For a moment, Rodney was tempted to protest, to see how far he could push things, but better sense prevailed, and he contented himself with another snarl. *Must he interfere in everything? Very well. But if time is lost, it is not my fault, or yours.*

They walked back to his quarters in silence, Heedless a respectful pace to the rear. If he were going to try to escape on his own, Rodney thought, this would be the moment. Heedless was strong, but not particularly young or quick, and Rodney thought he could at least knock him down, and maybe out. But the larger problem remained, and he sighed, letting the door of his quarters slide closed behind him.

It was strange how he remembered the hives as dark and dank. The lights were pleasantly bright, and the mist that curled out of the corners was cool and soothing, balm to the senses. Probably some of the difference was fear, of course, and equally of course they’d never had any reason to go into the parts of the hive where the Wraith actually lived. He snarled at his own stupidity. Carson had answered that question long ago: the Wraith saw a slightly different spectrum of light than humans did. And now that he was Wraith, he saw the hive as they did, light and pleasant and comfortable — home.

Heedless had left a game of habitats set up, a problem laid out on the overlapping circles, and as he reached for it, Rodney couldn’t help noticing that the fingers of his off hand looked somehow different, the skin more shiny than the skin of his wrist.