02 - Reliquary (27 page)

“Ready.” McKay sounded tense. “I can override from down here if he tries to
stop it from one of the jumper consoles.”

John caught Bates’ eye, got a nod in reply, and said, “Ramirez, as soon as
you get a clear shot, fire. McKay, open the doors.”

There wasn’t a rumble in the floor; the Ancient technology worked too
smoothly for that. But over the radio John could hear the faint hum of the doors
retracting, hooting cries of alarm and surprise from the Koan.

There were distant clunks as the grenades hit, then a reverberation, muffled
by the bay doors. John counted six seconds, gave Bates the signal, and ducked
around the corner. The door slid open for him, and they moved into the bay,
spreading out.

The big space was dark and would have been quiet except for the piercingly
loud roar of the ATA in John’s head. A chemical haze and an acrid scent from the
grenades hung heavily in the air. Koan sprawled around the edges of the
retracted floor, some moaning in pain, others lying limply. The jumpers were
stacked unharmed in their vertical launch racks, all still powered-down. John
couldn’t see Dorane or hear his shield, but it might be blending in with the
ATA’s din.

Jumper Five was in a rack on the second level, innocuous and inert like the
others, and John started toward it. Three Koan suddenly popped up from behind a jumper across the bay, firing wildly.
Bates and the others went for cover, returning fire, but John was closer to
Five, and he was pretty sure the Koan’s aim was lousy.

He ducked behind Jumper Two and climbed up the steps to the narrow walkway.
Five’s rear hatch was down and he bolted for it, slamming himself inside. He hit
the floor, covering the interior with the P-90.

It was dark and John was still wearing the sunglasses, but he could just make
out Dorane sitting on the floor in the cockpit doorway. He was holding a small
black box. There was something different about the shape of his head, something
odd about the way he was hunched there, but John could see the dim aquamarine
glow of the personal shield on his chest, and hear his breathing.

There was still firing outside, but John’s radio crackled and Bates’ voice
said, “Major, did you get it?”

“Negative, stay back,” John ordered sharply. “He’s in here with it.”

He heard Bates cursing and McKay telling someone, “That’s it, we’re dead.”

Dorane still hadn’t said anything, hadn’t moved, and that was making every
nerve in John’s body twitch in individual alarm. He flicked off the sunglasses.

Dorane just watched him, eyes gleaming faintly in the dimness. He had long
silver spines threaded through his gray hair now, running all down the sides of
his face and neck. The hand that rested on the little box had large hooked
silver claws, twisted and useless.

John managed to say evenly, “Wow. You’re a little different.”

Dorane tilted his head. “The transformation occurs whenever I leave my
athenaeum for more than a few hours. It’s inhibited by the field I use to
activate my version of the Ancient gene. It prevents me from staying in this
city, from traveling to any other world.” His voice was different, deeper,
a little raspy. “I told you, all my people were affected by our biological
weapons.”

“Yeah, you told me,” John agreed. Dorane’s physical changes were so
exaggerated he looked like a caricature of the other Koan. “But I wasn’t
listening to that part.”
He hasn’t set that thing off yet.
Because he
wanted to bargain? Or because it was a timed release? “What’s in the box?”

Dorane’s claws tightened on the black container. “It’s a very small
explosive, only meant to release a substance into the air.”

And McKay’s right again; we’re dead.
But John was getting more sensitive
to the ATA by the minute; maybe it was getting more sensitive to him. And if he
could get this jumper out of the bay and through the Stargate…

Automated launch sequence,
John thought at the jumper. Through the port
above Dorane’s head, he saw Jumper One’s interior lights flash as it powered up.
No, no, not you, this one. Five.
Next to One, Three shuddered a little,
as if its drive might have tried to activate and failed.
Oh, crap. Keep
talking.
“That’s disappointing, because I really didn’t want you to have the
satisfaction of killing me. But you already did, didn’t you? Did you think I
didn’t know that?”

“I suspected it.” Dorane had his back to the port and couldn’t see what was
happening in the jumper racks. “I didn’t expect you to be able to function this
well in spite of it. But it means nothing. You claim a Lantian heritage, but
even with the gene, you’re all just cattle for the Wraith.”

“Thanks, but we already knew that.” The firing outside had stopped, and
through his headset John could hear Bates breathing heavily and McKay having a
tense and mostly unintelligible conversation with Grodin. “Why don’t you just
head for the Stargate? You can probably make it.”
Launch, you little bastard,
he thought, trying to focus on Five’s unresponsive console. The ATA was just
one omnipresent roar, and he couldn’t sort out any individual signal from the
jumpers. Across the bay, Three’s interior lights flashed as it powered up.
Damn it.
He flew One and Three the most; Five had been
Boerne’s jumper. It made sense that the little ships would attune themselves to
a regular pilot.

“I fear I have lingered here too long already,” Dorane said. He sounded
serene, as if the prospect of destroying Atlantis and its inhabitants had put
him into a weird state of peaceful satisfaction. “Once my condition is triggered
by leaving the athenaeum, it advances swiftly. I am dying, even as you are.”

“You know, I really wish the Ancients had done a better job of getting rid of
you.” John didn’t think Five was responding to him at all; the low ambient light
in the jumper seemed to be getting even dimmer. Maybe he could get One to launch
a drone, to blow Five up. It would probably take out this wall of the operations
tower, but surely the heat would be enough to destroy whatever was in the box.
He hoped. Into the radio, he said, “Bates, fall back to the corridor and close
the blast door.”

“That won’t do any good,” Dorane told him, still eerily calm. He added, “The
Lantians didn’t want to get rid of me. They wanted to punish me.”

“Oh yeah, that was so unreasonable of them.”
Why hasn’t he opened it yet?
John thought. Then he looked at Dorane’s hands again. Those hooked claws
were too big to be retractable. “You can’t open that container.”

Dorane smiled, his teeth gleaming in the fading light. “Don’t excite
yourself, it’s on a timed release. I really did think of every possibility,
including the one that I might be incapable of opening it when the time came.”

It didn’t sound like a lie. The ATA was pressing painfully in on John’s head,
and something was changing inside the jumper, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
“And I’m guessing I won’t just be able to seal the jumper’s hatch.”

“It will react rapidly with oxygen, becoming corrosive. The ship’s shielding
won’t hold it in for long.”

Shielding,
John thought. It was still getting darker in here.

Darker because the aquamarine glow of the personal shield device was fading.
The shield needed an Ancient gene to work, but Dorane’s genetics were changing
as the retrovirus altered his body; the shield must be losing its connection to
him. When the shield shut down, the little device would fall off Dorane’s chest.
John shifted the P-90 to go for a headshot; he couldn’t afford to hit the
explosive.

Dorane blinked suddenly, staring at John. He must have felt the shield giving
way or read it off John’s expression. Before the glow faded and the shield
device fell, he was moving, moving fast. John managed to fire one burst, then he
was slammed back onto the jumper floor, Dorane clawing for his throat.

John grabbed his wrists, barely holding him off, thinking,
He’s really
fast, and he’s really strong.
He knew he had hit Dorane in the chest, but
the bullets weren’t even slowing him down. And the explosive still lay on the
floor in the jumper’s cockpit. He yelled desperately, “Jumper Five, now would be
a good time! Launch!”

This time, responding to his urgency, Five’s interior lights flashed on and
the console powered up.

Dorane tried to tear away from him, but John dug in with his own claws and
held on. He pushed and rolled, and they tumbled backward out of the hatch.

They hit the ramp, then the walkway, and rolled off, slamming into the bay
floor. John landed on top, which probably saved him a broken back, but he was
winded and dazed.

Above his head, Five slid out of its rack and glided out to hover over the
jumper bay’s launch door, open to the ’gate room directly below. It stopped, and
John realized the ramp was still open, that the safeties weren’t going to let
the jumper drop into launch position. He shouted, “Ramp close, come on, ramp
close!”

Dorane threw him off, pushed to his feet, and bolted for the open ramp. It
slid shut, sealing itself for launch with a faint puff of air. Dorane tried to
stop on the bare edge of the drop, arms flung up. Then he fell.

John heard the thump and the startled shouts from below.
Crap, that might
not be enough to kill him.
The man wasn’t human anymore. Then, still on
automatic, the jumper dropped into the ’gate room to take its launch position.

From below, John heard someone exclaim in horror.
Yeah,
he thought,
that probably did it.
The jumper would hover a few feet off the embarkation
floor, but the forcefield it was using to support itself… John rolled over and
shoved himself up, took a couple of staggering steps to the edge of the opening,
leaning out and craning his neck to see. Bates ran up to stand beside him.

Squinting against the glare of the brighter light in the ’gate room, John saw
McKay, Peter Grodin, and several others standing on the gallery steps, staring
at the jumper floating in front of the ’gate. There was a spreading stain
leaking out from under it as it still hovered serenely, waiting for a
destination. John fumbled for his headset, but Dorane had torn it off in the
fight. He told Bates, “Tell McKay to find a destination—a planet with no
atmosphere.”

Bates relayed it, and McKay hurried back to lean over the dialing console. It
only took him a few moments to pull an address out of the database, but John was
watching the jumper’s port. He saw a bright flash from inside.

Bates swore. “The shielding—”

Watching intently, John shook his head. “He said it was corrosive.” He hadn’t
said how fast it was. If they just had a minute for the ’gate to dial… He
noticed he and Bates were both dripping blood onto the bay floor, Bates from a
bullet wound in the arm, and John from the long scratches Dorane’s claws had
left on his shoulders.

Then McKay turned to the dialing console and started to hit the symbols, and
John felt like something was squeezing his skull from the inside. For a
horrified moment, he thought it was the bioweapon, that it had eaten its way
through the jumper. Then he realized it was the ’gate.
Uh oh.
He thought the automated sequence would take care of it, but just in case, he thought at
the jumper,
launch. When the wormhole opens, launch.

Then the wormhole initiated with a blast of glassy blue energy, the jumper
surged forward, and the world turned to white-hot pain.

John had a last moment of awareness, enough to realize he was lying on the
jumper bay floor. The light was blinding, but he knew it was Rodney and Teyla
who were leaning over him, and he thought it was Carson Beckett standing next to
his head, yelling orders at someone. He grabbed Rodney’s arm and tried to ask
about the jumper, but he couldn’t get the words out.

Rodney must have understood anyway. “It’s gone, it went through the ’gate,”
he said, his voice thick and barely recognizable. Then he looked up at Beckett
and shouted, “My God, Carson, will you get off your fat ass and do something!”

John decided that was a good time to let go.

John really expected to be dead, but being dead felt a lot like being in the
hospital. Antiseptic odors, tubes and needles in places that tubes and needles
should not be, too-bright lights, quiet serious voices with intermittent
flurries of frantic activity and arguing. At some point he knew it was McKay
standing over him, snapping his fingers at somebody and demanding to see John’s
chart, and Beckett telling him, “I would like to remind you, Rodney, that you
are not a medical doctor.” Teyla’s anxious face leaning over him, then Ford’s,
then a distinct memory of Elizabeth, sitting nearby, her feet propped up on a
stool while she read from a laptop.

He remembered all that as he came to gradually in the half-lit gloom of a
medical bay. He was lying on his side on one of the narrow beds in the recovery
area, a blanket tangled around his waist. He had loose gauzy bandages on his
hands, and his left arm was secured to a rail with a light band, but that was
probably to keep him from dislodging the several IVs that were stuck in it.
Except for that, he felt mostly okay;

the intrusive tubes were thankfully gone, though there was a lingering ache
in his throat. He had had a bath at some point and was wearing clean surgical
scrubs. He could see into the next bay, where a couple of the medical techs and
Dr. Beckett were working at a table spread with open notebooks, data pads,
coffee cups, and laptops.

And it was quiet. John went still, listening intently. No whispers, no alien
sound that his brain tried to interpret as music, no white noise. Everything he
could hear was homey and familiar: the distant crash of waves washing against
the city’s platforms, clicking keys as someone typed, hums and beeps from
medical equipment both Ancient and Earth-built. The only voices came from
further away in the medlab, and were human. He felt his ear cautiously, then ran
a hand through his hair. No spines.