The Lost

Chapter Eight: Trapped

“Right now our life signs are masked by the cloak,” John said. “But the minute we step outside the Darts will know exactly where we are.”

“And how long can we maintain the cloak?” Carson asked, leaning forward in his chair, his brow furrowed.

“With our present power consumption, a couple of weeks longer than we have food and water for,” John said. “That’s not the problem.”

“And how long is that?” Carson said, looking even more worried.

“We have ten days emergency rations,” Teyla said. “Carson, at worst Mr. Woolsey is not going to wait ten days before sending a rescue party. We told him the gate address where we were going.”

“No, but he will wait four or five days,” John said grimly. “I told him we’d be nursing an Ancient warship back to the Genii homeworld. He wouldn’t be surprised if repairs took a day or two, and the trip back took two or three days in hyperspace. He won’t get worried until Radim says we haven’t showed up in four or five days.” He looked at Teyla as if expecting her to say something about Radek Zelenka. As though she would undermine him that way before Dahlia Radim!

Teyla frowned. “Is there any chance of fixing the jumper?”

Dahlia shook her head. “I don’t believe so. Not that I can do. I’m familiar enough with Ancient technology to see that the main control crystals to the engines, the DHD and the stabilizers are burned out. Two of the three of them are actually broken, one completely and one with a long lateral crack that will shatter the minute we put any current into it. We would need replacement crystals and some means of repatterning them. Dr. Beckett says that the ships’ locker does not contain replacement crystals, and I have no tools to repattern them if it did. That’s not something we’ve ever succeeded at doing.” Dahlia spread her hands. “I’ve pulled damaged crystals from the warship, but the warship carried labeled replacements. It was a matter of switching them out correctly.”

Rodney always carried replacement crystals. The thought hung in the air between them. Ever since the time they’d been stranded on Pelagia, he’d carried a couple in his pocket just in case, to good effect on Manaria. And Zelenka had been the one who had come up with the method of repatterning the jumper’s control crystals more than five years ago, on the mission where John had been attacked by the Iratus bug.

“Can’t we…” Carson began, then lapsed into silence.

“No. We can’t,” John said. “If we start messing around in the control panels doing stuff when we don’t know what we’re doing, we may short out the cloak. And then we’re really screwed.” His eyes avoided Teyla’s. “We’re not going to figure out how Zelenka did it. I’m not an engineer, and neither are you. If Dr. Radim says she can’t do it, we’ll take her word as the expert.”

Dahlia blinked, as though surprised by the vote of confidence. And also perhaps by the honorary title, Teyla thought. She had not heard doctor used as an honorific among the Genii. It was solely reserved for healers.

“Where does that leave us?” Carson said. “Just sitting here until the Wraith get bored?”

“Pretty much,” John said. “Sooner or later they’ll have to conclude that either we’re all dead and that accounts for the absence of life signs, or that we’ve escaped into space, which is more likely. If we can’t repair the jumper, our best shot is to wait until the Wraith leave and then walk out.” He looked as though he didn’t like the idea much.

Carson put his head to the side. “It could be worse,” he said. “None of us are hurt, and we’ve plenty of supplies.”

“What if the Wraith simply hide?” Dahlia asked. “That’s what I would do. Take the hive ship around to the other side of the planet and wait.”

John glanced at Teyla and she nodded almost imperceptibly.

“We have sensors that would pick them up,” he said. “Even at that kind of range.”

I would know, Teyla thought. An entire hive ship close at hand would never escape her attention, not as her Gift was now, strengthened by Todd’s tutelage. But there was no need to speak of that to Dahlia, and certainly not now while they must work together in close quarters. If she took Teyla’s Gift as pollution it would make things very awkward, not only for Teyla personally but possibly for their alliance with the Genii as well.

Dahlia nodded. She had no idea what the capabilities of the puddle jumper’s sensors were, after all. “There is another option,” she said.

“What’s that?” Carson asked.

“Rather than walk back to the Stargate, we are less than twenty of your miles from the wreck now,” she said. “We are more or less along the line that my repair parties trekked from the gate to the wreck. I can easily find it from here. And it would take much less time than going three times further to the Stargate.”

“But if it’s inoperable then we have to walk back to the gate anyhow,” Carson said. “And besides, if we walk back to the gate it will take a couple of days. It will take longer than that to get the ship in the air and return to the Genii homeworld. From the gate we can just dial Atlantis directly.”

“And then we will be back in Atlantis, with nothing to show for our journey,” Teyla said. “Four days or more gone, and just as we were.” She looked at John. “If time is of the essence, we should continue on directly to the wreck and hope to get it in the air. We are already here.”

John nodded. “And complete the mission.” The idea of returning to Atlantis with nothing to show for it save a lost puddle jumper clearly rankled. “That’s the best plan.”

“Then we wait like cornered mousies,” Carson said, glancing out the front window as though he could see the patrolling Darts above. “For the cat to go away.”

Seven more hours stuck in the limited confines of the jumper was making everyone jumpy. Carson prowled around looking for something to do, and Dahlia Radim was inventorying the emergency equipment, though they already knew perfectly well what they had. Teyla went from front to back again, pacing. Parceling out MREs and eating a belated dinner or an early breakfast or whatever it was did not take more than three quarters of an hour. And then she was back to pacing again.

John was the only one who seemed calm, sticking to the pilot’s chair as if glued there, his eyes on the sensors as though he could will the Wraith away.

Teyla slid into the copilot’s chair. “Has anything changed?”

“The hive ship has recovered Darts,” he said, his eyes still on the display. “I can’t tell if that’s because they’re powering up to leave, or because the patrol is out of fuel and they need to switch off.”

“We will see,” Teyla said quietly. Using the Gift in a more active way, to feel out the minds of the Wraith above looking for more specific information, would almost certainly alert the Wraith to their presence. And if they were trying to convince the Wraith that they had gone that would be a bad idea. Better to wait and see what the Wraith did.

“Yeah.” John radiated tension in every line of his body, strung tight to the board. He was blaming himself for the delay, she thought. And how not? It really was his fault. If they had returned to Atlantis for Radek before coming here, the jumper would be repaired by now.

But the Wraith would still be here.

“Even if we had Dr. Zelenka,” Teyla said, “We should still have to wait until the Wraith departed. We cannot challenge a hive ship.”

“That’s true.” He took a breath and the set of his shoulders eased somewhat.

They waited what seemed an interminable time.

“You must be worried about Torren,” he said.

“Not really.” Teyla looked out at the same stretch of canyon wall they had been staring at for seven hours. “He is safe in Atlantis. Dr. Kusanagi is watching him, though I imagine she has traded with someone else by now.”

“That doesn’t worry you? That somebody or other has Torren?” He looked at her sideways.

“That is how we do it at home,” she said. “Everyone must hunt or farm or trade, and once a child is weaned and is too big to carry everywhere they are watched by whoever is available and willing. Since Torren is the only child in Atlantis, there are many people who do not mind.” She shrugged. “He is coming up on two years old, John. He is not a tiny infant. Children are part of the life of the city, not something kept locked away so that they will not disturb anyone. I know this is not how you do things, but I am not of you.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not.” His eyes didn’t leave the sensor display. “Guys aren’t supposed to want anything to do with kids. It’s girly.”

“How can being a father be girly?” Teyla blinked. “Is not fatherhood by definition masculine?”

“Maybe it ought to be, but it’s not.”

“And who does all this judging and measuring?”

“Other guys.” John shrugged. “Maybe it’s a generational thing. I don’t know. But it’s not like my dad was a great father.” His hands moved over the board, never looking at her.

“It is not like my mother was a great mother,” Teyla said. “She left when I was Torren’s age and never returned. But I never lacked for people who cared for me. Charin was my mother.” She could think with warmth of her now, and only a little sorrow.

“Charin was really super,” John said, and his voice sounded like he meant it. “She seemed like such a kind person.”

“She was,” Teyla said. It was right to tell the stories of those who were gone. “She had a grown daughter who had a baby sixteen days old when she and the baby were taken by the Wraith in the same Culling where my father was taken. That was all her family, all there was.”

John was looking at her as though cold had touched his spine, but she went on. “We are shaped by the Wraith, John. They shape who we are, the way that we live and what we value. I had no one, and neither did she. Rather than turn to bitterness, she gave her love to an orphaned child and taught me to live. But that is who we are because we have been Culled to the bone. If we were safe or even safer, perhaps we could afford to be different.”

He nodded seriously. “I’ve seen that,” he said. “It seems like there are two ways people deal with it, societies deal with it. Either they come together and differences stop mattering, or they tear each other apart. They give what they have, or they start shooting each other. That’s why civilizations fall.”

“It is one reason,” Teyla said. “But I do not know how you can tell which a society will do beforehand, why some worlds that have been Culled help each other and others devolve into banditry, where the strong prey upon the weak until there is nothing left but chaos and starvation.”

“I don’t know either,” he said, and she thought he was thinking of something unvoiced, some place he had been or people he had known. “The only thing you can control is what kind of person you are.”

“Never leave one of your own behind. Never prey on the weak,” she said. Teyla’s mouth twitched. “The strong are a different matter.”

“I wish I could say I was that guy,” John said, toggling between sensor displays for the hundredth time.

“At least you think you ought to be,” she said. “That is worth something.”

“Hang on.” His voice sharpened. “Look at that.”

On the heads up display the marker for the hive ship accelerated, numbers flashing beneath it too fast to read. And then it vanished.

The hive ship gone, John said loudly enough to carry to the back where Carson and Dahlia were talking. It opened a hyperspace window.

Teyla felt as though a weight she did not know she carried had lifted. I think they are really gone, she whispered. I do not sense the Wraith anymore.

Carson stuck his head around the doors to the back. They are gone?

Yes, John said. He almost jumped out of his chair. So let's pack up the survival gear and get going.

I did that three hours ago, Teyla said. The packs are waiting by the tailgate.

John grinned at her. Ok then! Let's move.