Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis - Far Horizons (22 page)

*Yet,* Guide said. *Ready the darts.*

*Once you do, we’ve lost the element of surprise.*

*Guide is right,* Snow said. *There is no more time. We cannot risk being discovered before we launch the darts.*

The blades were already moving, stripping the casing away from the darts. Snow came through the hatchway from the bridge, followed by Spark, as the pilots climbed into their darts and closed the canopies.

*I’ve modified each of our stunners to use a different energy signature,* Spark said. *You’ll get two or three good shots apiece, no more. After that, the Asurans will adapt.*

*We know,* Guide said. He nodded to his pilots. *You know what to do.*

Seeker stiffened against his will. He had seen the culling beams used many times, but never experienced them himself, and he flinched at the prospect despite knowing he would feel nothing while in the pattern buffer until he reached the surface. If he ever reached the surface. To die without ever being aware of it, to be energy and then to be nothing —

The culling beam touched him, and then he was in an unfamiliar corridor, with high bright walls of blue glass that looked out over a vast city. Far above, a dart was pulling out of a dive, its wings flashing against blue sky. He let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding and turned to look for their target.

The Asuran city was cold and painfully bright. Guide shivered in the sudden chill as he looked around. The others were all there, although Seeker looked unsteady and Snow bemused. He doubted anyone had ever risked using the culling beams on the queen before.

Spark bounced on his heels with what might have been either eagerness or nerves, his thoughts crackling like his namesake. *This way,* he said, and set off up the nearest stairs.

Snow flanked him with Seeker a step behind, and Guide followed to cover their rear. Once they halted on a landing, frozen by the sound of footsteps in the corridor beyond, but no one came to investigate.

*We don’t have much time,* Spark said. *They’re going to run an internal scan eventually and notice that we’re here.*

Guide could feel Snow’s frown. *How much farther?*

*The next landing,* Spark said, and they hurried their pace.

At the next landing, Snow looked out and pronounced the corridor clear. *Which way?*

*Straight across,* Spark said.

They crossed into a room flooded with colored light. High windows bathed the room in blue, and the Asuran computer core glowed like a fire, plated in many-colored glass. Whether that served some function or was their idea of ornament, he didn’t know, and now wasn’t the time for curiosity. *Get to work.*

The walls were lined with computer consoles, and Spark approached one at once, with Snow following at a second station. Seeker took up a third, running his fingers dubiously over the input device. *What do you want me to do?*

*Nothing, until we get into the system,* Spark said. *Then input the code. You’re not going to be able to interface your scanner with the Asuran system, so you’re going to have to retype it from the scanner’s readout.*

*I know the code,* Seeker said.

Guide could feel Spark’s skepticism. *If he says he does, he does,* Guide said. Seeker’s memory was near perfect, whether or not he understood the commands written into the code.

*All the same, copy it from the scanner,* Spark said.

*When?*

*Soon.*

Guide held his stunner at the ready. *Hurry.*

Spark’s fingers flew across the input device. Snow was working steadily as well, but more slowly, hesitating occasionally over the Lantean symbols on the keys. They were close to their own lettering, but not identical, and arranged in a different pattern. She and Spark had their minds open to each other, and Guide could catch only flickering hints of symbols he couldn’t understand.

*Now,* Spark said abruptly. *We’re in, do it now.*

Seeker drew out his scanner and propped it on the console, typing rapidly.

*They know we’re in,* Spark said, and Snow added almost in unison, *They see us.*

*The door,* Guide said, and fired quickly at the control panel by the door. It spat sparks, and the whole room shuddered, the lights above flickering. Seeker’s scanner toppled to the floor, and he ignored it, typing in the code from memory.

*You had better know what you’re typing,* Spark said.

*I know everything, remember?* Seeker said without slowing.

Snow tossed her head, torn between amusement and frustration. *If we survive, I’m going to kill you both.*

*Hurry,* Guide snarled. There was the whine of an energy beam in the hall outside, and the crack in the sealed door lit; someone was cutting through it with a weapon. He went to one knee behind the central core, the only possible cover in the room, bracing his stunner for the best aim.

The whine rose to a shriek, and a section of the door fell inward. An Asuran stepped in after it, in form very much like a Lantean or a human, but too perfect, every hair in place and every fold of his clothing falling without disarray, no sign of emotion on his unmarred face. He lifted his hand, and as Guide watched, it sharpened until his arm ended in a blade.

Guide raised his weapon and fired. The Asuran didn’t stagger or crumple; he froze, and then fell like a toppling pillar, hitting the floor as stiffly as a statue. The next two were already through, walking toward him unhurriedly and without hesitation. He fired again, and again; the first shot told, another Asuran dropping, but the third only rippled against the Asuran’s chest as if her flesh were made of water.

*You said three shots,* he growled.

*I said two or three,* Spark said. He threw Guide his weapon, a poorly aimed throw, but Guide managed to snatch it out of the air even so, throwing down his own useless stunner. He raised it and fired.

More Asurans were stepping through the door, or flowing through it, the rearmost pouring like water through the bottleneck formed by their fellows and then reforming inside the door. Guide fired, and fired again. This time it was the fourth shot that rippled harmlessly against the chest of an Asuran woman, who looked down as if in mild curiosity and then sharpened both arms to dagger points, lunging toward him.

He dropped and rolled, throwing himself to the other side of the computer core. *Seeker!*

Seeker threw him his own weapon without turning to look, better aimed even so; he was reminded for a moment of their childhood games, clambering through the corridors of the hive where they were born. He caught the stunner and fired, once, twice, a third time.

*It’s done,* Seeker said.

Spark was backing away from the Asurans, his scanner raised as if it could defend him. *It’ll take seven minutes for the code to propagate.*

*We don’t have seven minutes,* Snow said.

*We might,* Guide said. He scooped up one of the useless stunners and threw it at the window. The glass shattered, and he could see sunlight outside. Not another interior room, then, which was all he needed to know.

Seeker followed his thoughts all too quickly. *There might be a thousand-foot drop out that window.*

*Would you rather let them consume you?*

*We would not,* Snow said, and made for the window. One of the Asurans was in her way, and she fired her own stunner, their only remaining weapon. He dropped, and Guide moved quickly to follow her, with Seeker at his shoulder.

Snow pushed Seeker past her. *Jump,* she said. He did, without looking back, to the sound of splintering glass. Guide could feel the sting of his cuts and a heartbeat’s terror at falling, and then his scrambling landing on some ledge or outcropping below. It was good enough for him, and he took the stunner from Snow’s hand. *Go,* he said, and she made as if to argue, and then nodded and dived through the window herself.

He turned to motion Spark through, and saw him throw himself back against the wall as one of the Asurans lunged at him with a sharpened hand. He skewered Spark’s coat rather than his flesh, and Spark tugged away, his mind flaring panic.

Guide fired, and Spark ripped free of the Asuran as the creature froze in place. He threw himself out the window, and Guide followed, letting the useless scanner fall as he flung himself into open air.

There was a moment’s disorientation as he fell, and then a ledge was coming up faster than he expected. He struck it hard, and nearly rolled off and kept on falling. Then hands were catching at him, Snow pulling him back from the ledge and urging him up the stairs to a high causeway open to the sky. He let himself lean on her by necessity, feeling bones broken, and then feeling them knit, equally painful.

One dart was diving toward them, only one, but there was no time to mourn the loss of the other two. He stood, bracing himself for the chill of the culling beam, and then snarled in bafflement as the dart swept past them and down to a skidding landing on the causeway.

He ran toward the dart, not sure whether he wanted an explanation or the pilot’s blood. The canopy opened, and Flicker leapt out, his bad eye bloodshot and his face pale. *They’ve raised the shield. We can’t get out.*

He looked up and saw that the sky, which had been blue, was now a patchy bronze, not the brilliant gold of the Lantean shields, but certainly still enough to stop something as fragile as a dart.

*Three minutes,* Spark said.

*Too long,* Guide said. Doors were opening, now, more of the Asurans moving toward them from a distance, and some of them had energy weapons. *We’ll never last so long.*

*At least we can distract them,* Snow said. *Make them spend their three minutes.*

*Maybe we can do better,* Spark said. *If this city is patterned after Lantea, it’ll be ringed by shield emitters. But their shield is nowhere near the strength of the Lantean one. All we need is to take out one shield emitter, and I think we can punch through.*

*I’ll try,* Flicker said.

*No,* Guide said, pushing past him to climb into the dart. *I will.*

He launched the dart and pulled it into a long banking turn, sweeping back over the others. He could see them through Snow’s eyes, standing shoulder to shoulder, Spark and Seeker guarding Snow’s back with Flicker out protectively in front of her, hissing his defiance at the oncoming Asurans. He thumbed the culling beam on, and they dissolved into its beams. He had been aware of them all, a whisper in the back of his mind, and now all was cold and silent.

He turned the dart toward the city rim, pushing it for speed. It shuddered under his hands, its modifications making it far less maneuverable in a tight turn. The canopy crawled with warnings; the Asurans were launching drone weapons, their sleek deadly forms pouring out from the city center. If they had any doubt whether this was a Wraith craft, they knew it now.

The dart’s display was signaling a shield emitter at the shield’s edge, although, unlike Lantea, the city continued beyond the shield, a sprawl of cold jagged buildings as far as his instruments read. It was surely designed to protect against an attack from outside the shield, not from within; that was his advantage. But the drones were already homing in on him, and he dared not slow the dart as he approached the wall of energy that would smash him if he was a moment too slow in his turn.

He fired as he dived on the shield emitter, the dart spitting energy beams that struck home without weakening the shield. Closer, he had to get closer, although every instinct was warning him to pull out of the dive. He kept firing as the dart’s warning systems began to scream, the shield looming like a wall.

At the last second, he pulled out of the dive, skimming the surface of the shield as he fought to keep the dart steady in the turn. He brought the dart around, but the drone weapons were close behind him, making their turns more sharply than he could in this misshapen craft. There would be no hope of a third pass.

He dove on the shield emitter again, firing as he neared it, letting the dart’s systems scream their warning. One more second and there would be no chance of pulling out of the dive. He drove onward, firing again.

New readouts crawled across the dart’s displays, a marginal weakening of the shield. It had to be enough. He resisted the instinct to wrestle the dart into a too-sharp turn that would only set them spinning, and held it on its course directly into the shield.

It was like hitting water at high speed, an impact like a full-body blow and then a moment when the controls responded as sluggishly as if he were struggling through thick liquid. Then they were through and rising like an arrow toward the sky.

The dart shuddered as they broke the planet’s atmosphere, damage warnings streaming across the canopy; this might well be its last flight. But it was handling better as he cleared the atmosphere. He set a course in the opposite direction from the remains of the freighter, preparing to signal the hive to retrieve them.

He aborted the motion even as he began it. Multiple Asuran cruisers were moving toward him, closing in on the dart from all sides. He might evade them for a while, if the damaged craft would hold together, but he could never hope to outrun them. And the hive was no match for even a single cruiser in its weakened state. He would not summon it to its death.

He queried the dart urgently for time elapsed since takeout. Three minutes twenty seconds. He hissed as the cruisers closed in. He had been a fool to trust his life to Spark’s experiments, and now he was going to pay with his life and the queen’s. And all for nothing. He gritted his teeth and set a ramming course for the bridge of the nearest cruiser. He would make the Asurans pay at least some small price for all their lives.

Two other cruisers adjusted course, expecting this tactic, and the dart shrieked warnings as he came into their field of fire. He braced himself for impact, keeping the dart on its deadly course. At least the wreckage of the dart might reach its target.

No impact came. No shots were being fired, he registered even as the dart’s proximity alert warned of imminent impact.

He wrenched the dart out of its dive, clearing the cruiser’s hull by a hair’s-breadth. He arrowed between the cruisers, and they ignored him as if he were only a piece of floating debris, breaking out of their attack formation to resume parking orbits around Asuras. He skimmed between them unheeded, and then past them, out toward empty space, and the hive, and home.

The queen stood before her throne, her blades and clevermen assembled before her. Their ranks were thin, but they need not be so for long, not in the hive that had freed their people from the pestilence of the Asurans. Guide intended to choose carefully from among the young blades who would swarm to join them. He could afford now to take only the best of pilots, and only those he could envision ever trusting at his back.

*We have won a great victory today,* Snow said, and clamoring pride rose all around her like thunder. *May there be many more such, by the efforts of our hive, and of my lords of the zenana.* She reached out her hand to Guide, and he came to kneel at her side, pride and longing burning as if it could consume him from within. She took his hand and raised him to his feet, and he could feel her own joy, like snow leaping silver on a wild wind. *My Consort.*