Nightfall

Chapter Fifteen

Ronon emerged into a chamber formed by the natural growth of the great tree’s thicker trunks, following Keller and the others. Flooring had been set across it, and a circular door had been fitted into a curved bole. Two more of Soonir’s men were waiting for them there, one at a viewing slot in the door. He nodded to the rebel leader. “No sign of any more Wraith. The others may not have been alerted yet.”

“Good,” said Soonir. “Our luck is holding.”

“For now,” said the Satedan. He wondered if Sheppard and the others were faring any better.

There was a commotion behind him and Ronon turned to see Takkol barge past Lieutenant Allan. The fear the elder had shown in the cages was gone and his usual haughty mien had returned. “Is this one of your bolt holes?” he demanded, glaring at the rebel. “Is this how you moved around the settlement, to plant your seeds of sedition and plot to overthrow my rule?”

“Yes,” Soonir replied evenly. “And now it has saved your life. I think gratitude would be in order.”

“To you? Never! For all we know, you are the instigator of all this! Perhaps you are in league with Kullid and Aaren, perhaps you are one of the pawns of the Wraith!”

Soonir’s face clouded. “I had hoped your eyes would have been opened when your precious Aegis renounced you, but I see that was too much to ask for! You are still the same blinkered fool you ever were.”

The two men squared off, each a moment away from resorting to physical violence. Ronon’s face twisted in a sneer and he stepped between them. “Both of you, be quiet before I beat that noise out of you.” Both the rebel soldiers and the remainder of the elder’s guards bristled at his words.

“How dare you threaten me!” Takkol retorted.

Soonir eyed Ronon. “The sickness has made you foolish, voyager. You are in no state to fight.”

“If you think that,” Ronon glowered at the two men, each word a razor, “then you’re a poor judge of character.” He snorted. “Look at you. Away from the Wraith for less than a minute and you’re already falling back into your old patterns.” The Satedan shook his head. “Your people need help, not your damned posturing.”

“You know nothing of our society,” Takkol replied defensively.

“I know this.” Ronon prodded him in the chest. “I’ve seen more worlds scoured clean by the Wraith than you can count, my own home among them.” He coughed and spat. “And I know that the only way to fight the Wraith is to be willing to give everything. Even your life.” He shot a look at Soonir. “So if you want Heruun to have another sunrise, put aside any rivalry you have. Fight together or die apart. It’s that simple.”

His grim pronouncement brought silence with it. Neither Soonir nor Takkol could dare to deny the truth of what he had said.

Finally, Keller spoke up. “The Wraith who came to the cages… There will be others. Sooner or later, they’re going to do what they always do. Start the cull.”

“We’ve gotta hit them now,” said Allan wearily. “We have the element of surprise.”

Ronon nodded. The lieutenant’s suggestion made good tactical sense. “We’ll need your help,” he said, turning back to the elder and the rebel. “The Wraith must be staging from somewhere…”

“The sick lodge,” said Soonir. “Kullid has given it over to them.”

“If we can get close without raising the alarm, we can tip the balance.”

Takkol frowned. “There are many of our people there, many of the sick who have come lured by Kullid’s promises that the Wraith have a cure for them.”

“Laaro’s parents…” murmured Keller.

“Can you get us there unseen?” said Ronon.

Soonir paused, thinking. “It can be done. But we must move now.”

“I will come with you,” Takkol added, drawing himself up. “I should be there.”

“The more, the merrier,” said Allan.

Ronon felt a hand on his arm and turned. “Are you really sure you’re up for this?” Keller spoke quietly. “I’ve been watching you. You can fool the others but you can’t fool me, I know the pain and disorientation are getting worse.”

He shook her off. “I’ll be okay.”

The doctor’s jaw set firmly. “I’m sure you think that. But just in case you’re not, I’m coming with you.”

“No,” he began, “that’s not going to happen. You need to stay out of sight, take the others and find a safe haven.” Ronon gestured towards the nurses and medical staffers who had come with Keller from Atlantis.

“This isn’t a discussion,” she replied. “And besides, you’re not the reason I want to go back to the sick lodge. If Kullid is telling the truth, and the Wraith do have a cure for the sickness, that’s where it will be.” She folded her arms and stared defiantly at him.

He sighed; he couldn’t muster the will to argue with her. “Fine. Just don’t get yourself killed.”

“Lorne!” Sheppard shouted to attract the major’s attention and jabbed a finger toward a shallow curved ramp leading down toward the lower level of the computer core. “Take McKay, get down there and stop those creeps from using the collapsar.”

“What are you going to do?” said McKay.

“Something daring to keep them off your asses. Now go!” If he had paused to think seriously about it, Sheppard knew that the recklessness of what he was about to do would convince him to stay put; so he threw caution to the wind and just winged it.

Yelling at the top of his voice, he burst from cover with his assault rifle at his hip, the fire selector slotted at full auto. It had exactly the effect he wanted, catching the Wraith off guard as he looped around the raised walkway, laying down a fan of bullets. Shots whined off the support stanchions and blew warriors off their feet. All around him were the buzzing flares of stunner bolts, some of them so close he could feel the numbing corona of energy.

Reaching another curved ramp on the far side of the chamber, he let himself fall backwards into a half-slide, coming down against one of the low safety railings. Ignoring the friction down his thigh, he rode the smooth banister toward the lower level. A pair of Wraith moved to block his path and he kicked off, spinning around to land bodily against the pair of them. Reacting without thinking, Sheppard slammed the still-hot muzzle of the G-36 into the face of one of the aliens, and sent it howling away, clawed fingers grabbing at flash-burned skin. The second Wraith grabbed a handful of his gear vest and yanked him backward; he lost the rifle and let himself drop. The warrior overbalanced and fell hard against a steel wall. The colonel mirrored a move he’d once seen pulled by a WWF wrestler and put all his weight behind his elbow, driving the Wraith’s skull into the wall with a nasty crunch of bone.

More of them were coming. He couldn’t spare a second to see if Lorne and McKay had made it down; instead he flung himself across the floor and snatched up a fallen stunner rifle, clutching the metallic, maggot-shaped weapon to him. He squeezed the firing pad and dispatched the aliens advancing on him.

Gunfire rattled on the far side of the chamber and he scrambled away, pausing only to snag the strap of his discarded G-36 and swing it over his shoulder.

“Sheppard!” He heard Rodney shouting his name. “Stop him!”

He didn’t need to ask who. The Wraith veteran — the one from the bridge — was shoving two of his lackeys across the chamber, toward another of the room’s cylindrical alcoves. The bigger warrior drones were carrying Fenrir’s isa unit between them.

Unlike the matter converter, this other alcove was a shallow dais under lit by green and white strobes, pulsing in a regular rhythm. To one side, a curved panel was connected to the device and standing over it was a Wraith scientist.

Something clicked inside Sheppard’s head as he suddenly understood what was going on. The other alcove wasn’t another converter. It was a teleport pad.

And with that they can beam that sun killer anywhere in range. Gotta stop them no matter what —

Without warning the deck of the Aegis resonated like a struck drum skin and tilted wildly for a few seconds as the ship’s gravity generators struggled to compensate. The lights ringing the chamber dimmed and then steadied.

The aliens were still intent on their deadly task. He saw what was coming, and he knew he was too far away to stop it. Sheppard dumped the unwieldy Wraith rifle and grabbed at his G-36, inserting the last clip of ammunition he had on him. He had to make this count.

The warrior Wraiths dropped the collapsar unit on to the pad. From where he stood, Sheppard could see the pulsing rings around its circumference. It was armed and ready to be deployed.

The colonel raised the rifle to his shoulder and took a breath; he had just one shot at this, and if he did it wrong… Hell, he had no idea what would happen, but it probably would be very, very bad.

The Wraith veteran spotted him, drew his pistol and took aim. Sheppard’s thinking time had run out.

They both fired and moved at once, dodging away from one another; but John Sheppard wasn’t aiming at the alien with the gun. He had drawn a bead on the Wraith scientist. The trigger pulled hard to the stop, the colonel unloaded a burst into the black-jacketed alien and the console before him, praying he would hit something vital.

The alien scientist jerked and spun as the discharge ripped into him; the delicate fusion of Asgard crystal-metal construction before him blew apart, even as the power of the transporter field surged through it.

Distantly, Sheppard was aware of McKay shouting out a warning. He had only a moment to register one thought. Looks like I broke something expensive.

Then the teleporter control panel detonated like a bomb and a shockwave of released energy flashed across the core chamber, blowing out circuits and tearing into anyone who stood in its path. Sheppard felt the deck fall away underneath him and he was carried backwards, the crackling, murderous heat searing his palms as he brought up his hands to protect his face.

Pain made him cry out as he slammed into the far wall. There were a few seconds where he teetered on the edge of passing out, but he was ready for it, and sucked in a shuddering breath. Sheppard coughed and shook his head, sending a rain of dust and tiny crystal splinters falling away to the floor. Using the rifle as a prop, he hauled himself up, ignoring the spikes of agony from his knees. Through the soles of his boots he could feel the deck of the Aegis vibrating constantly now, juddering like a badly-maintained engine. Did I cause that? he wondered. Carter will be pissed if it turns out I bent the ship.

“McKay?” He managed a dry-throated yell. “Lorne!”

“Still alive,” moaned a familiar voice. “I think.”

He lurched across the chamber, avoiding the corpses of the two burly Wraith warriors. They had unwittingly saved Sheppard from being immolated, largely because they had been standing between him and the energy surge. The front of their bodies, the silver-grey amour plate and oily, burned skin, had become molten and run together like hot wax.

Sweet-smelling chemical smoke from fried components wreathed the floor, each step disturbing it. The colonel coughed and flinched as a shape rose abruptly from the deck and stumbled away from him, toward the blackened ruin that was all that remained of the teleport pad. Back-lit by the firefly-flicker of the wounded computer core, the Wraith veteran dragged itself toward the alcove.

Resting there on its side in a snowdrift of glass shards was the collapsar device, damaged but clearly still operable. The Wraith moaned as it moved, one whole side of its body a mass of seared flesh. Driven on by hate and fury, it clawed through the thick air toward the weapon.

“Stand back!” Sheppard shouted, bringing his rifle to his shoulder.

The Wraith threw him a look over its shoulder, one eye blazing with anger, the other a ragged, empty socket. It hissed at him and stepped forward, its one good hand snatching at a control wheel on the device’s upper surface.

This time there was no hesitation, and Sheppard shot him through the head.

McKay and Lorne emerged from behind a long, wide control panel. In the flickering dimness of the chamber, the two men looked like a pair of grim-faced ghosts. The major’s skin was streaked with blood; his right cheek and his ear were covered in hundreds of tiny lacerations where fragments of glassine crystal had buffeted him in the blast wave.

Sheppard eyed him. “You should try an electric shaver next time,” he deadpanned.

“With all due respect, sir,” Lorne replied, “bite me.”

McKay pushed past them and gingerly nudged the dead Wraith off the top of the collapsar device where it had fallen. Sheppard saw that the red rings were pulsing in a new configuration, growing quicker with each cycle.

“Oh no.” Rodney’s voice was a whisper. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” His fingers scrambled over the surface of the Asgard weapon, stabbing at keys without apparent rhyme or reason.

“I really hate it when he does that,” Lorne grated.

McKay looked up, his eyes wide with horror. “They weren’t going to wait. They started it up before it was even ready to deploy. Oh, this is bad. It’s already building to criticality.”

“But you can disarm it, right?” Sheppard leaned in. “I mean, you’re Rodney McKay, genius guy. You do this sort of thing all the time. You thrive on it!”

“The thing I thrive on the most is not being reduced to my component atoms,” he replied, his voice cracking. “which this thing will do, along with yours, this ship’s and anything else nearby when it implodes.”

“But that thing needs a star to make a black hole,” insisted Lorne. “Right?”

McKay bolted back up to his feet. “Yes, but even without one it will make a hell of a mess. Like, blowing a chunk out of a planet or the aforementioned reducing-to-atoms thing.” He paused, rubbing his hands together. “Oh no.”

“Stop saying that,” Sheppard snapped. “It’s not helping.”

The major winced. “How long until… Well, until it does what it does?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes, I think. These Asgard numerals all look the same.”

“What happens if this thing goes off in deep space?” Sheppard nudged it with his boot. “I mean, nowhere near any planets or stars or stuff?”

“Please do not kick the alien super weapon while it is counting down to gigadeath,” said McKay. “And in answer to your question, it would create a bubble of hyper-accelerated space-time around it that would instantly age everything inside a ten kilometer radius by a factor of several billion years.”

“Then what’s the problem?” said Lorne. “Let’s just use the Asgard transporter and beam it as far away as we can.”

“Great idea, brilliant solution, first class,” snarled McKay, “except for the one small detail that Colonel Trigger Happy here just destroyed the central teleportation matrix!”

“Oh no,” said Sheppard.

Like a hammer cast down by some mythic titan, the blunt bow of the starship Aegis slammed through the drifting halo of ice and dust surrounding the planet Heruun, the force field beyond the curved wall of grey steel smashing frozen shards the size of buildings into glittering pieces. Behind it, a trail of frigid gas and swirling particles spread in a sharp-edged wake. Energy cannons arrayed in omni directional turrets along the curved wings and towering fins of the Asgard vessel tracked to aim backward, and loosed a shower of lightning bolts at its pursuer.

The Wraith Hive Ship paced the Aegis, undeterred by the storm blazing around it, its defensive shields sparking where each hit landed. Random blasts penetrated the ethereal energy envelope and carved wounds in the bony hull, and gouts of blood-like processor fluid spat into the void where they instantly became ice. But the wounds seemed to do nothing but enrage the Wraith vessel, and it fell after the Asgard craft, vomiting back fat streaks of superheated plasma in furious retort.

In aspect, the Hive Ship’s profile was like that of the blade from a spear tip, a rounded petal with dagger-sharp edges; if it had been in battle with one of its own, as the Hives of this clan so often were, the conflict would have been ended by now. But the Asgard craft, a match for the Hive Ship’s speed and weaponry, was obdurate and durable. Even as it was now, injured by damage within and without, piloted only by mere humans instead of the Asgard themselves, it still resisted them.

Probing sensor scans read through the wash of radiation and discharge between the warring vessels, as the Wraith ship sniffed the void for the first sign of weakness just as an ocean predator would taste blood in the water. Thermal blooms deep inside the steely hull warned of power failures and broken conduits; there was a chance that the Asgard ship might destroy itself if the engagement went on too long. For the Wraith to have the victory they craved, obliteration was not their goal. The alien craft was to be brought to heel, not destroyed. And to achieve that, a swift and decisive blow was needed. A hard, punishing strike, enough to hobble the Aegis once and for all, before the humans ran it into the ground.

The Hive Ship received its command through the webs of neural fiber that coiled through the channels in the hollows of its bones, and reaction mass surged through its drives.

The Asgard vessel tried to turn away, using the fog of ice and dust as a screen, but the Wraith were too fast. The Hive came up from its position to the stern of its quarry, rolling hard to present its port edge to the dorsal surface of the Aegis. It powered ahead, cutting over the top of the other vessel on spikes of thruster fire. As they passed, the Wraith craft unleashed a series of pinpoint broadside shots from its cannons, targeting them at every power nexus its sensors could detect.

The Aegis, rendered sluggish by the damage it had suffered, shuddered and groaned. Across the top of the hull, brief spurts of flame and vented gasses signaled direct hit after direct hit.

Shredded metal forged in shipyards a galaxy away tumbled into the grip of Heruun’s atmosphere, becoming brief darts of fire.

“Damn it to hell!” said Carter, the rare curse escaping her lips as a blue crackle of static charge snapped around the console and caressed her outstretched fingers. She snatched back her hands in reflex and winced, the holographic screens around her blinking on and off as the backwash from the Wraith bombardment lashed the vessel.

“Colonel,” said Teyla, and her tone was enough for Sam to know what was coming next. “Power levels are dropping across all tiers. The autonomic weapons are not responding.”

Carter grabbed the control spheres on her panel and manipulated them, trying to access the ship’s offensive systems, but nothing seemed to work. If anything, the Athosian woman’s estimate of the problem was conservative. The semi-intelligent computer systems of the Aegis had already begun a vain attempt to repair the damage and prevent it worsening — and to do that, power had been channeled from the guns to shields. Sam hesitated for a split-second, ready to override the machine mind’s choices, but then left it to work. The energy cannons they still had operable were barely making a dent in the Hive Ship. Unlike the Aegis, a vessel that had only recently risen back into space and was still riven with damage from battles past, the Hive Ship was at the top of its game, fresh for the fight.

If the situation had been reversed, the Wraith craft would have already been ashes; but that wasn’t how it was playing out. Sam had been at the helm of ill-fated craft before, from a gut-shot F-15 Eagle during Desert Storm to a blast-damaged Goa’uld Death Glider, and more besides. She had a pilot’s innate feel for a wounded bird, and the Aegis was hurt bad, she could sense it.

The deck rocked and vibrated as another salvo slashed across the hull. Carter caught Teyla’s eye and saw her own grim expression mirrored on the face of the warrior woman.

Sam reached for the radio on her gear vest. “Carter to Sheppard, respond. What’s your situation, over?”

When the colonel replied, he sounded husky and fatigued. “Good and bad. The Wraith in the computer core have been eliminated. But they left us a gift.”

Carter felt her blood run cold. “They got to the matter converter?”

“That damned thing is like a doomsday weapon vending machine. We got a fully-armed collapsar device down here, and its ticking. Well, flashing, but you get the idea.”

“Can McKay —?”

He answered before the question left her lips. “He’s trying to disarm it, but I’m not hopeful. We need another solution.”

“The Asgard teleportation system…” ventured Teyla, but Sam shook her head and nodded at the power grid on the holo-screen. Among other less critical systems, the network of energy links feeding the transporters aboard Aegis were dark.

“We can’t beam anything off this ship,” she told her, “not us, not the collapsar.” Carter swallowed hard at the end of the statement, realizing that what she had just said was effectively a death sentence for them all.

There was a rattle from the radio as it changed hands and then Rodney McKay’s voice issued forth. “Sam, if you have any suggestions about how to deactivate this thing, they would be really appreciated.” His tone was tight with anxiety. “I mean really, really appreciated, because I got nothing.”

Sam’s chest tightened. Perhaps, if she had been down in the core with McKay, she might have been able to help… But she doubted it. If Rodney couldn’t find a solution, Sam knew it was likely she would have come to the same conclusion. The methodical, logical Asgard were not the type to fit a star-killer with any kind of an off switch.

“Colonel?” Teyla gestured to one of the flickering holographic panes, an exterior view showing a fuzzy image of Heruun below them. “If the Asgard weapon detonates here, what will happen to the planet?”

“Nothing good,” Carter replied, a sudden, cold sense of certainty settling in her. She glanced down and scanned the active panels of the console in front of her, finding the energy stream she was looking for. It glowed softly, pulsing blue-green. The power train to the hyperspace drives was still active, still on standby after Fenrir had used it for his earlier short-range displacement. By some miracle, the pounding the Aegis had taken from the Wraith had not yet disrupted it.

McKay called out again. “Sam? Are you there?”

“We’re all here,” she said, half to herself. “Wrong place, wrong time…” Carter worked the controls, and the ship groaned as the sub-light engines throbbed with power. “I’m bringing us around. I’m going to cycle the hyperspace drive.”

It was Sheppard who spoke next. “Roger that..” His tone made it clear he understood what she was really telling him.

“We’ll need to be at least five light-days out…” Sam heard Rodney in the background.

“Got it.” Sam’s hands moved in loops as she selected the jump co-ordinates and began the process that would spin up the engines to full power.

On the exterior screen, the view was changing as the Aegis turned slowly to face the Hive Ship, the two craft closing on one another bow-to-bow.

Teyla glanced at blinking indicator on her console. “The Hive Ship is sending a signal. A call for our surrender.” She cut off the communication without waiting for Carter to suggest it. “Colonel, I know we cannot let the weapon detonate near the planet, but if we depart, we will leave Heruun to the predations of the Wraith.”

Sam shook her head. “Actually, I’m programming the hyperspace envelope to extend a little further.” She smiled thinly. “We’re going to take them with us.”

“They won’t let that happen.”

Carter moved a control and the Aegis surged forward on a direct collision course toward the Hive Ship. “I’m not going to give them a choice.” She remembered something another Asgard had once said to her about human ideas, about a crude and brute force approach, and a faint smile crossed her lips. Sam toggled the radio once again. “All hands,” she announced, “brace for impact.”

It was an unexpected and radical tactic.

The Wraith saw the Aegis coming and prepared for a broadside barrage, waiting for the inevitable backlash from the Asgard ship’s weapons. Too late, the sensor pits studding the hull of the Hive Ship detected energy moving not to the vessel’s cannons, but into the drives and the gravity generators and integrity fields. The hammer of the Aegis turned in space and fell toward the hive, starlight gleaming across its surface as it loomed large.

Too late, the worker cadre crew in the Hive Ship’s command nexus realized what the humans were doing, and they tried to retreat. Something like panic spiked through the aliens, and in sympathetic vibration the organic semi-mind of the great Wraith vessel shuddered. Vital seconds lost, they tried frantically to shift the orbit of their craft as the Aegis powered toward them, closing the gap.

Too late, they discovered that they could not flee fast enough. The thrusters flared and the vast beetle-shape of the Hive Ship began a turn, but the Asgard craft was upon them, the force fields of both craft crackling and falling as they pressed into one another, like soap bubbles meeting, distending, popping.

Too late, there was furious screaming and angered cries of alarm; but these were drowned out by the chaos of slow collision as the Aegis slammed into the Hive Ship, dragging its portside wing over the ventral hull of the Wraith craft, ripping it open like a massive talon.

Great chunks of fuselage from both ship were slashed apart and sent spinning away; huge plumes of gas and fluid jetted into the dark. Metal met bone in a screeching, grinding impact that resonated through the decks of both vessels, leaving ragged wounds in either craft.

The force of the impact knocked both craft into a slow spin, the two fighters now locked together in a literal death-grip. Wreathed in clouds of their own wreckage, the massive ships fell toward the edge of Herrun’s outer atmosphere, the first licks of a cherry-red glow flaring across their leading edges.

Teyla Emmagan dragged herself up from the deck where she had fallen and wondered if Samantha Carter had taken leave of her senses. Ramming the Hive Ship could have destroyed them in the attempt, and yet somehow both craft were still functional, and she was still alive. Her hand strayed to her belly and she thought of the tiny life growing there. So faintly, she thought she could sense her child’s weak distress, and she did her best to push back with gentle, soothing emotion; but nothing could draw away from the terrible choice that was closing around them all. With no means of escape from the Aegis, they would be forced to stay with the Asgard ship until it was consumed by the energies of the collapsar weapon. Her breath caught in her chest as she dwelled over that thought; We will save the lives of an entire world, but we will perish in the void. I will never see my beloved Kanaan again, and he will not know his own child, nor will the baby be carried to its birth. She blinked back tears. I am sorry, little one, she told the unborn. I am…

Teyla let out her breath in a gasp. The realization was so hard and fast it felt like a punch to the sternum. There was a chance. Yes! A means of escape! “I have been so blind…” she muttered, turning toward Carter.

Sam’s face was dirty with smoke and among the flickering ruins of the damaged holo-screens, the colonel looked like more like a war-weary specter than a living being. Teyla could see by the expression on her face that Carter had been just as surprised that her tactic worked as anyone.

“The hyperdrive field won’t initiate,” she snapped. “Come on! We’ve got the Wraith right where we want them, come on!” Carter slammed the heel of her hand into the console before her and the screen shimmered, then stabilized. She worked the activation sequence again, her brow furrowed.

Teyla’s panel showed static-laced images of the Aegis’s bow, rendered in simple digital frames. As she watched, a spill of blinking red indicators swarmed around the ragged edges of the ship’s damaged zones, and began to penetrate inside. The hazy graphic reminded her of screens in Atlantis’s infirmary, images showing viral colonies infecting healthy flesh. “The Wraith are reacting,” she said, “warrior drones are massing near the hull breaches. They’re coming aboard.”

“I’ll say this for them, they’re tenacious,” growled Carter. Once more the hyperdrive activation sequence stalled in mid-program and she hissed through her teeth.

The constant background shudder through the deck plates was now a steady throbbing rumble; the ships were falling into the atmosphere, doubtless cutting a fiery streak across the sky of Heruun that could be seen across the planet.

Sam shot her a look. “One way or another, we’re going to end this. Either out there, or we burn up on re-entry.”

Teyla shook her head. “No, Colonel, I think there is another way.”

Carter blinked in surprise. “I’m open to any ideas, but make it quick.”

“Fenrir’s auxiliary ships, the triangular craft he used to seek out and capture the abductees from Heruun. There may still be some on the hangar level. I believe the craft possess a short-range version of the —”

“Asgard transporter!” Sam’s eyes flashed with sudden understanding. “But the hangar is two decks down from here.” Her face clouded as she glared at her console. “And if I leave this —”

“I was not suggesting you accompany me,” Teyla said, stooping to gather up a fallen weapon from the deck. “I will go alone. If I am successful, then I will transport you away. If not…” She sighed. “It will matter little.” The Athosian gestured around the wrecked command deck. “I can do nothing else to help you here, Colonel. Let me do this.”

Sam saw the determination in her and nodded. “Okay, go. But I’m not having you do it by yourself. I’ll get you some help.”

“She is beyond insane!” shouted McKay, pushing himself off the deck from where he had landed.

The impact of the collision had sent all of them to the floor, even though they had been ready for it. Sheppard dusted himself down and recovered his rifle and a pair of Wraith stunners, nodding slightly. He had to admit, Rodney had a point. Ramming ships… Hadn’t that kinda thing gone out of fashion along with Viking longboats?

“Whatever you think of Carter,” ventured Lorne, “she’s gutsy.”

“I want my guts to remain where they are, inside here!” McKay ranted, patting his belly. “Just because this ship looks like a mallet, you don’t have to use it like one!”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘if all you got is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail’,” said Sheppard. “Never really got what he meant by that until just now.” He blinked and massaged a crick in his neck.

“Colonel Sheppard, do you read?” Carter’s voice crackled through the air.

Lorne found the radio where it had fallen and tossed it to his commander. “I read you,” Sheppard said wearily. “We’re all still in one piece down here.”

“Speak for yourself!” snapped McKay, lurching toward one of the active computer consoles.

“John,” came the reply, and Sheppard knew things were at their most serious. Carter didn’t often call him by his first name, and the fact that she did it now meant that she wanted his full and absolute attention. “Teyla’s on her way to the hangar bay on tier three, that’s a deck above you. There are Wraith swarming the ship through the hull breaches. Rendezvous with her and see if you can find a working shuttle.”

“Got it.” Sheppard’s thoughts raced. Those freaky UFOs that had dragged the Puddle Jumper from the lunar surface… If one was still working, it could be their ticket off this tub. “Lorne, McKay! Gear up. We’re moving out.”

“No,” said Rodney, in a low, serious voice. He didn’t look up from his panel. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“What?” Lorne blinked. “Uh, doc? Hello? Escape route?”

McKay snatched the radio from Sheppard and spoke quickly into it. “Sam. I’m at the secondary drive monitor down here. I can see the hyperdrive program… It’s not initiating.”

Carter sighed. “Confirm that. I’m trying to re-program it on the go from here.”

The scientist shook his head. “That’s not going to work. Too many variables. With all the damage its taken, without an Asgard to program the transition, that’s never going to work. The wave-form won’t coalesce…” He stopped and shot Sheppard a look. “I can help. If we do it together, Sam up on the bridge and me down here, in tandem we might be able to get the drive to accept the activation program.”

“Rodney…”

A crooked, terrified smile crossed the other man’s face. “Hey, look, I told you you’d need my help sooner or later. You’re not as smart as you think, Carter.”

“You sure about this?” said Sheppard. “We… We may not be able to come back for you.”

McKay looked away and made a dismissive gesture. “Go away. Let me do my thing and you do yours.”

The colonel threw Lorne a nod and the two men raced toward the chamber doorway and the corridor beyond.

Rodney called out as the hatch opened. “And you better be kidding about the ‘not coming back’ part!”