STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) (36 page)

The
George
Hammond
cruised through hyperspace, serene and cool against the blue shifted blur. Eleven hours until time.

John lay stretched out on the lower bunk of one of the
Hammond’s
empty crew quarters, halfway between sleeping and waking. The noise of the ship was soothing, the low key sounds of systems working normally. Best to sleep while he could.

There was no point in worrying about the rest of his team. Ronon and Cadman and Keller were probably sleeping too. On the upper bunk above him Radek Zelenka was snoring softly.

We’re coming to get you, John thought, as though Rodney could hear it. I promise.

Nine hours until time. Jennifer Keller turned over on the narrow bunk, trying to get comfortable. Private quarters were scarce on the
Hammond
. Laura Cadman was permanently assigned to the
Hammond’s
crew, however, and as a captain rated a single room the size of a closet. It had been nice of her to offer to let Jennifer take a nap there while she did whatever it was she did.

Jennifer didn’t know her well, and she felt distinctly awkward around her. Laura had been a good friend of Katie Brown’s, people said. She’d tried to play matchmaker for Katie and Rodney. How she felt about Rodney’s next girlfriend was up in the air.

But it wasn’t as though Rodney had broken up with Katie for her. They’d called it quits months before she and Rodney had even considered going out. And ok, maybe Rodney had dumped Katie really awkwardly, but that was just Rodney. It didn’t have anything to do with her. He’d said it was because he didn’t want to get married, but then he’d been the one in a hurry.

Maybe because he knew he didn’t have much time left, some part of Jennifer whispered, some part that was ruthlessly thumped and put away. But it refused to stay in the box no matter how hard she shoved it down. They’d had nearly a year. That was as much as some people got. If that was all there was for Rodney…

Down. Jennifer shoved the thought from her mind. She wasn’t going to think like that. They were going to get Rodney back. And then everything was going to be fine.

Or was it, the treacherous little voice whispered. What if he was Wraith? What if he was crazy like Michael? Was that really what she planned to do with her life — nurse someone permanently insane? Was that what Rodney would want for her?

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Jennifer thought
grimly. There was no reason to think that Rodney would be impaired
that way. If he survived going off the retrovirus…

And then everything will be peachy? Her little internal voice just wouldn’t be stopped. What if he wants to stay in Atlantis forever? What if he wants to get married? She could never bring up a child there the way Teyla was with Torren, never knowing if they were going to be attacked, never knowing what awful thing might happen. She felt a sick guilt over the cat! Children ought to be raised somewhere safe, with good schools and other kids and Little League teams and Girl Scouts and nothing worse that happened than cancer and car accidents. Not here, where any minute something might happen. How many gravely wounded children had she seen in the last three years on how many planets? There was no way she’d risk a child of hers that way. Never.

Rodney would understand that. And besides, Rodney didn’t like children. He probably wouldn’t want any, ever. He’d rather stay in Atlantis, living like he was in grad school forever, racing toy cars with Sheppard in the middle of the night…

Jennifer turned over, blinking. Laura Cadman’s pictures regarded her solemnly from the wall over the bed, an old couple with their arms around her, one on each side, while she smiled from beneath her beret, impeccable in service dress and brand new lieutenant’s bars. Across the bottom someone had written, “We are so proud of you Laura!” She topped the old woman by a head. The man smiled into the camera, the corners of his mouth wobbly with emotion.

Did they have any idea what she did? Probably not. No more than Jennifer’s father did. He didn’t ask anymore.

Dad, I’m home to stay, in Nevada. Oh wait. Two months later and I’m gone again. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything about it. I can’t call. You can email me, and I’ll reply in a week or two. That’s all.

Jennifer put her head down on the pillow. They’d find Rodney. And they’d get him back to normal. And then there would be time to think about all the rest of this.

Seven hours until time.

Ronon sat down at the table in the
Hammond’s
mess, realizing belatedly that he had a plate full of chicken casserole and no utensils. Maybe the bread, but that was going to get stares from the Hammond’s people at nearby tables and comments about barbarians who don’t know how to eat, an embarrassment to Sheppard and to Carter who had originally invited him to join the
Hammond’s
crew.

A pair of chopsticks in a paper packet waved in front of him, and Ronon looked up. Captain Cadman smiled down at him from beneath her beret, a tray in her other hand. “Spare pair,” she said.

“Thanks.” He took the packet from her.

“Is this seat taken?” She gestured vaguely to the chair opposite.

“No.”

“Cool.” Cadman slid into the seat and set her tray down. “Pretty busy, huh?”

“Yeah.” Ronon tore the packet open and split the chopsticks carefully. “When did Carter start carrying chopsticks?”

“I dunno.” Cadman applied herself to her chicken casserole with great gusto. In fact, Ronon wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a woman eat so fast, not even in the Satedan guard.

He was staring, and she stopped and looked up at him. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

“I did a six mile run on the treadmill this morning,” Cadman said. “Kind of worked up an appetite.” She didn’t look like she’d been running, her red-gold hair wound up neatly at the back of her neck. He supposed it did look wet.

“You like the
Hammond
?” he managed.

Cadman stopped, the food halfway to her mouth. “I do.” She took a bite and swallowed quickly, then smiled. “Colonel Carter’s a lot more of a hard-ass than Colonel Sheppard was. You’d better do it by the book and you’d better have an answer when she asks you, or you get the eyebrow and some scathing comment about being better prepared.” Cadman grimaced. “I’ve never been very good at the book. You know. Lots of people say, ‘Laura Cadman is really enthusiastic and she works hard.’ But not so many say ‘Laura Cadman is really smart.’ So I get that look a lot.” She grinned at Ronon, and it looked like the sun suddenly came out. “So I get questions like ‘What would you do if you were in a shaft filling up with water and you could blow the door with C4 but you didn’t have a fuse?’ And most of the time I’m like ‘WTF? Why would I be in a shaft filling up with water with a locked door and C4?’”

Ronon busted out laughing. “That kind of thing happens,” he said, waving a chopstick at her.

“Maybe to you! Wouldn’t it be better not to get stuck in a shaft filling up with water?”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, still chuckling. “But it happens.”

“So what would you do, Mr. Smarty Pants?” she asked.

Ronon took a long sip of his iced tea, as though carefully considering the problem. “Shaft. Water. C4.” He grinned again. “I’d say, ‘Teyla, how about getting us out of here?’”

Cadman laughed. “Oh that’s a good one. That will sit well with Carter!”

“See, Teyla’s got everything but a field kitchen in that backpack. Tiny little woman, but you get into anything and Teyla says totally calmly, ‘It so happens I have a flare gun, an electric drill, four chickens and a spare Genii uniform right here.’”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Ronon took another drink.

“Major Lorne said that back when he did training at the SGC, O’Neill was the one with the final sign off and he was the hard-ass. Carter was the nice one. But Jesus H. on a pogo stick, she’s the one washing people out now! There are four people with transfers pending as soon as we get back. They didn’t cut it. In, like, three months.” Cadman took a bite of her bread. “So I have to watch it. But it’s really nice that Colonel Sheppard asked to borrow me while Major Lorne is on crutches. And that he said in writing that it was because he needed ‘a Marine with a brain.’ That helps a lot.” She paused for another bite. “It sucks that Lorne broke his leg.”

“It sucks a lot more for the people who got fed on instead,” Ronon said.

“That too.” Cadman looked thoughtful but uncowed, and Ronon remembered that she was, after all, the only Marine lieutenant in five years who’d served her whole tour and gone home without a stretcher or a body bag. Cadman was good at getting by. She was like the kids he’d grown up with, the best of them.

“Cadman, why are you a Marine?”

“Laura.” She shrugged, her eyes on her plate as she took another bite. “Call me Laura. And I guess it was because that’s what my school had. It was Navy or Marines, and I don’t like boats.” She looked up, her eyes very bright. “If what you’re asking is why I’m not a graphic designer or something, it’s a long story.”

“Ok,” Ronon said. He liked to hear her talk. And she did, pretty much nonstop.

“My parents are both flakes. I was in junior high when my dad went off to Arizona to find himself and my mom went to Miami with her boyfriend. So I moved in with Nana and Pops in St. Petersburg. Pops used to be in the Navy, so he talked about how much he’d liked it and all. But Nana and Pops didn’t have any money for school, and they thought I ought to do better than the drive-thru, and my grades weren’t good enough for any scholarships. Except the Marines. So they paid for my four years, and then I owed them four years.” Cadman shrugged. “My four years are up, but I like it, so I’m staying in. How many mediocre graphic designers get to go to other planets?”

“Point,” Ronon said.

“Besides,” she said, “you meet some really interesting people. And some of them are pretty hot.”

“What, like Rodney?” Ronon asked, remembering Cadman’s whole mess with Rodney when she’d first gotten there, when a malfunctioning culling beam had left her stuck in Rodney’s body.

Cadman laughed. “No, not exactly.” Then she sobered. “I’m really sorry about Rodney. And I’m glad I get a chance to help get him back. He’s an ok guy.”

Ronon’s eyes met hers across the table. “We may not get him back.”

“It won’t be because we didn’t try,” Cadman said.

Ronon looked away. Something weird like hope was crawling around in him. Maybe they could do this. Maybe it would work. And then everything could go back to normal.

“When we get into it,” he said, “you watch out for Zelenka, ok? We’ve got to take him because we’ve got to have somebody to deal with Wraith tech if we need to, and we can’t count on finding Teyla first. He can’t shoot for shit.”

“I’ll watch out for him,” Cadman promised. “He’s a sweet old guy. Reminds me of Pops.”

One hour until time.

Sam sat down at her desk and took a deep breath, looking up at the pictures held to the metal wall above with cheerful magnets in the shape of bright colored flowers. Cassie in her graduation gown. Daniel in a floppy hat and wire rimmed glasses, Teal’c looking inscrutable beside him in the light of some alien sun — that was an old one, that picture. Daniel didn’t look much like that anymore. Jack in his baseball cap, sitting on the end of his pier with a fishing rod in his hand, looking straight at the camera with a sideways smile.

This was the email she never sent. But it was there, in case someone else needed to send it.

October 16, 2009

Dear Jack,

I’m not sorry. I don’t regret any of it, not one minut
e, not one second. Not ever.

Your Carter

Her radio sounded softly. “Colonel, we will be dropping out of hyperspace in fifty minutes.”

“Understood, Franklin. I’m on my way.” She carefully hit the save button and closed the laptop, turned off the light and went up to the bridge.

Forty minutes.

“Be prepared to reopen a hyperspace window immediately,” Guide ordered the helmsman.

The hive ship had not yet exited hyperspace, but Guide took no chances. Silent in the center of the control room, Queen Steelflower nodded her assent.

“We are ready, my commander,” the helmsman said, his head bent over the console, half in shiptrance. “We are coming out of hyperspace now.”

They slid through the window, blue streaked stars shifting to the speckled blackness of a normal starfield.

“We have a hail,” the ship-master said, looking over his shoulder to his queen.

“One hive ship on our instruments,” the helmsman said, “One and one only. It is Revenant, belonging to Queen Death.”

“That is well,” Guide replied. “All is as it should be.” He looked at Steelflower. “What is your wish, My Queen?”

“Hail Revenant,” Steelflower said evenly. “And inform them that I have arrived to speak with my sister.”

Sable, the commander of the honor guard, winced inwardly. Let it never be said Queen Steelflower lacked audacity! She spoke as a superior queen to a lesser, or at least as one who would never acknowledge lesser status. Perhaps she would come as an ally, but not as a subject queen. And yet perhaps there had been too much bowing and scraping to Queen Death. She was, after all, not the only queen.

“Yes, My Queen,” he said.