STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (10 page)

But there were too many of them, and as the hot stench of cordite and laser-burned air stung his nostrils, Colonel Young saw the specter of defeat closing like an oncoming storm front.

Angry at the thought, he raised his carbine and tore off rounds into the belly of a glider as it roared over his head.

Eli pushed his way through the building knot of people crowding the entrance to the gate room and glanced around. The sounds of hit after hit were almost a steady rhythm now, and each new impact brought another rain of dust down from the ceiling. He flinched as a long, low groan sounded through the metal decking surrounding the Stargate. He’d expected the thing to be open already, and people moving through like a crocodile of school kids on a field trip; instead it was silent and inert.

Eli caught sight of Rush over at one of the consoles. The Air Force tech, Riley, was craning over his panel. “Doctor, I’m reading a dangerous energy spike in the core.” The digital gauges were flicking up toward the redline, and Eli remembered the last time that had happened.
Not good
.

“It’s the bombardment,” Rush snapped, shooting an angry look upwards, as if he could beam his irritation through the rock at the invaders. “Whomever is attacking us doesn’t understand the instability of this planet’s geological structure…”

That caught Eli’s attention immediately.
Instability
? Was this planet some giant earthquake waiting to happen? He wondered again about what he hadn’t been told about this project.

Rush looked up, saw him, and sprang at him, grabbing his arm. “Good, you’re safe. Help me with this, Eli.” He propelled him over to the dialing computer, a tower of electronics wired into the crystalline guts of an incongruous mushroom-shaped device. On the podium’s surface was a red hemisphere surrounded by rings of keys, each sporting one of the gate’s star-sign symbols.

“With what?” he managed.

Rush tapped the console. “The ninth chevron.”

Eli jerked with surprise. “What?” Icarus Base was being taken apart, stone by stone, apparently by one of those
let’s-not-tell-Eli-about-it
alien threats, but Rush was still fixated on his project. “Listen, forget that, we all need to get the hell out of here!”

And to underline his point for him, at that moment another bone-shaking blast rocked the base. Rush met him with a steady eye. “If that bombardment continues, the stability of this planet will fail. The radioactive core of P4X-351 will go critical.”

Eli felt the blood drain from his face as the full import of Rush’s statement registered with him. “You mean explode? The whole planet?”

The doctor nodded. “It took us two years of deep space surveys to find this site. The properties of this world are unique.” A strange intensity glittered in Rush’s eyes. “This may be our last chance.”

“If my math works…” began Eli, thinking it through.

Rush spoke over him. “We can’t assume that—”

“I said
if
,” he insisted. “If I’m right, then it’s not a power issue, it’s the gate address.”

Rush was shaking his head, turning away. “We’ve known the first eight symbols of the sequence for years.” He tapped the dialing panel. “The ninth symbol has to be the point of origin. That’s how the Stargate works, that’s how it’s always worked.”

Despite the desperate circumstances, despite the looming threat of death — or maybe because of them — Eli felt a sudden surge of excitement. This was the game puzzle all over again, a problem he knew he could solve, if he could just come at it from the right angle. “So, what…. What if this
isn’t
the planet you’re supposed to dial from?”

Rush snorted and gestured at the walls. “This is where we
are
.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Eli nodded back at him. “But I’m just saying, what if we’re not supposed to be
here
? What if we, you and Icarus and all of this stuff is supposed to be somewhere else?”

The scientist became silent. And over their heads, rock ground on rock as fire fell from the heavens.

CHAPTER FOUR

Telford pressed the F-302’s throttle up to zone five full military power, and flicked the switches to bring the AIM-120 missiles beneath its wings from ‘safe’ to ‘armed’ status. “Red flight, our target of import is the heavy troop transport,” he began, speaking into his mask mike. “Valens, DeSalvo, Kanin, you three give their fighter cover something to think about. Chavez, you’re with me.”

The colonel got a chorus of acknowledgments and he nodded to himself as the shapes of the enemy landing force became clear on his engagement-range radar. “Here we go, gentlemen. Break and attack.”

Red Flight Two, Three and Five flicked into high-g turns and roared away from the v-formation, and from the corner of his eye Telford saw Captain Chavez’s Red Four move up to a strike posture.

Then the screen of eight Death Gliders was on them and the night sky became a storm of orange fire. Telford slammed the 302’s joystick over hard, and the interceptor responded instantly, standing up on one wing to vector right past the diving shape of an enemy fighter. They were so close, the colonel’s jet wash buffeted the ship, but he had no time to spend worrying about it. Telford was relying on the rest of the pilots to keep the gliders off Chavez and him long enough to put a dent in the plans of the invaders.

“Tally,” called Chavez, spotting their target. “Eleven high, angels fifteen and descending fast.”

“Roger that,” said Telford. “Designate target.”

“Copy. Red Four has the lead.”

The two interceptors split and angled up toward the bulky shield-shaped starship. So intel said, each one was capable of holding hundreds and hundreds of men, and if they were bringing down mobile ring transporters into the bargain, then they’d have a line back to the big motherships in orbit and enough reserves of troops to occupy a small country. Telford’s scanners pinged a warning tone. “They see us.” He knew that on the ventral hull of the transport, heavy-wattage energy cannons had to already be tracking them.

Out of nowhere, a flash of brilliant white appeared off in the distance and Telford heard a blare of static over his helmet speakers. “This is DeSalvo,” called a voice over the general channel. “Red Two is down, I repeat, Major Valens is down.”

“No chute, no chute visible…” Kanin was gruff. “He’s gone.”

Telford cursed. The numbers were against them, and every second the enemy was allowed to push closer to Icarus was a second closer to the end of them all. “Just keep the bandits off us,” he replied.

Beam fire streaked down past his cockpit and Telford heard Chavez give an annoyed grunt. “Incoming.”

Telford’s air-to-air missiles signaled a lock on the transport ship and his finger hovered over the firing stud. “Red Four, I got your wing.”

“Copy,” said Chavez. “Fox Three!” The captain snapped out the firing call and Telford saw an AIM-120 leap off the rack and blaze away on a spear of white fire.

“Fox Three,” he repeated, and released his own warshot, tracking in on the same target. The heavy transport veered away, turret cannons turning as it did, still spraying fire across the path of the F-302s.

Chavez’s missile ran straight into a fan of energy bolts streaming from the enemy ship, but Telford’s shot spiraled pass the ball of smoke and fire and managed a glancing impact on the port aft quarter. The transport lost a chunk of hull metal and flames spat from the wound in the metal — but it was still airborne, still on target.

“Hell no—” Chavez began, turning to follow the target as it dropped past their ascent. He didn’t see what the colonel saw, the winged shape trailing behind the transport, hidden in its thrust wake.

Telford called out to the other pilot, but it was too late. The Death Glider pacing the troop carrier caught Red Four as it turned and unleashed a barrage of murderous pulse-fire into the F-302. The aerospace fighter came apart in a storm of metal; there was no explosion, only a whirlwind of steel and plastic.

“You son of a bitch!” Telford’s reaction was immediate and furious. The Death Glider spun away from its kill and the colonel bore down on it, the death of his wingman blinding the other pilot to his presence long enough for Telford to put his guns on the enemy. In a jousting pass, Telford raked the target with the railgun cannons in his 302’s nose and ripped Chavez’s killer open. The Death Glider exploded and he rode out the shockwave, coming hard about.

“Red Four lost,” he said into the radio. “Red Flight, report.”

“Red Five. I’m hit but I can handle it,” Kanin replied.

“Red Three,” grated DeSalvo, voice tight with effort. “In a turning fight. Damn, these creeps are serious.”

“On my way,” Kanin reported.

Telford throttled up, diving after the transport, but even as he aimed and fired his next missile salvos, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. The injured ship was already bellying down toward the desert and its turret gunners were quick, throwing up sheets of fire to knock down the AIM-120s before they could strike home.

He broke off and went down on the deck, swooping low over the grounded, smoldering vessel. He grimaced as he saw a horde of troops boiling out of the craft, and strafed them with the railguns, but the damage was already done. The enemy was advancing on Icarus Base. Small arms fire licked at his wings as Telford pulled up and turned for another pass.

The colonel toggled the ground communications channel. “Icarus Base, do you read? This is Telford.”

“
We read,
” said a voice. It was Colonel Young, and in those two words he made it clear he knew this wasn’t going to be good news.

“We didn’t get to the transport before they offloaded…” Telford turned a practiced eye over the lines of enemy soldiers. “You’ve got at least a thousand ground assault troops coming your way. I repeat, estimate battalion strength enemy foot mobiles inbound to your perimeter.”

“Understood,” said Young, the numbers registering in the cold, unforgiving tactical calculations of his thoughts. A glider howled overhead, low enough that he could have thrown a stone and struck the belly of it, and off to the colonel’s right a Marine with a M249 SAW machine gun tracked the craft, pouring fire into it as it went, a fountain of expended brass shells arcing over his shoulder. In the next second, Young heard the snarling whoop of a Goa’uld energy weapon and a bolt of fire struck the Marine dead where he stood.

“
We can slow them down, but there’s not a chance in hell we’re gonna be able to stop them…
” Telford’s voice was tense with exertion. “
Lock the doors, and we’ll meet up back at the SGC!
”

Young let off a burst of fire from his M4 in the direction the hit had come from and ducked back into cover behind a wall of sandbags. “Do what you can, Colonel. Icarus out.”

He took a breath and switched to the base alert frequency. The order he was going to give was the one that no field commander ever wanted to voice, but the choice had been taken from him the moment this planet had been targeted for conquest. His eyes flicked to the dead Marine, lying beside his still-smoking gun.
We can’t win this.

Close by, a non-com behind one of the railguns put his shoulder into the weapon and hauled it around, coming to bear on another Death Glider as it wailed through the air.

“This is Colonel Young,” he said. “All non-essential personnel muster to the gate room for immediate evac. All combat personnel, fall back to standby positions and prepare to disengage.” He changed channels again. “Sergeant Riley, do you copy?”

There was a momentary pause before the gate technician came on the line. “
Sir, yes sir.
”

“Override the lockout protocol and dial the Stargate to Earth.”

Fire erupted from the railgun as the glider powered in toward the battlements on an attack run. Riley’s reply was lost in the heavy snarl of the cannon as the kinetic kill rounds shredded the fighter’s cockpit and sent it into a corkscrew spin directly toward the gun emplacement.

Moving without thinking, Young vaulted up and grabbed the gunner by the scruff of his armor vest and dragged him off the mount. The two of them spun away into safety just as the glider slammed into the railgun and detonated.

The back blast threw the pair of them, commander and enlisted man, into a head-over-heels tumble down the access gantry and back into the base.

Rush looked up irritably as a scattering of pebble-sized stones rattled off the elevated walkway leading up to the Stargate. Up above the hanging, swaying lighting rigs, the dark streaks of rents in the concrete ceiling were visible in the shadows. He frowned and absently brushed a layer of rock dust from his shoulder. The lights gave an ominous flicker as the distant report of gunfire and explosions went on and on.

Lines of people were huddled in the access wells below the walkway, fear ready and strong on the faces of every one of them. For a moment, Rush studied them, wondering what each of them were thinking. He saw faces he knew — Park and Franklin, Brody and Volker, Boone and Palmer and all the others.

They want to go home,
he thought. He couldn’t blame them, but at the same time he couldn’t empathize with them. They all had something to go home to, after all, but what did he have? What was there back on Earth for Nicholas Rush except another failure? The last time he had been back, to pick up Wallace and go through yet another round of meetings with the IOA, they had demanded answers from him that he couldn’t give. He recalled looking into the eyes of Carl Strom, the current head of the oversight committee, and knowing that the man thought Project Icarus was a hiding to nothing. A fool’s errand.

The pattern was repeating itself over and over: each time Rush would get close to the answer, but each time fate would reach in and snatch it away from him. But not this time.
Not this time, not if Eli is really on to something.

If the power
wasn’t
the problem…if it
was
the dialing sequence…

Eli was waving his hand over the keys of the Dial-Home Device podium. “The symbols on the Stargate are constellations as seen from Earth, that’s what you said.”