Jo Graham - Unascended

“That looks like it,” Sora said.

“That’s Asgard. That’s Asgard! And you found a piece of their genetic manipulation equipment? Where did you find it?”

“On Sateda,” Sora said. “It was in the city museum. Gathering dust, because no one who knew anything about science had ever taken a good look at it and figured out what they had.”

“The city museum that your people agreed not to loot as part of your trade agreement with the new Satedan leaders.”

“You looted this from our museum?” Taka said, swiveling around in his chair to face Sora. Daniel wished he wouldn’t, as it only made the jumper’s course more erratic, but he felt any tensions between the two of them were worth encouraging.

“We made a deal for the artifacts we took off Sateda.”

“At gunpoint, the way I heard it,” Daniel put in.

“That’s not true,” Sora said, but Taka was frowning. The jumper’s flight became even less stable.

“Maybe you should concentrate on flying the ship,” Daniel prompted.

“You said you found the device.”

“We did find it,” Sora said. “We had a deal with Cai and his people on Sateda to salvage machinery that they were in no position to use. Then the Lanteans got in the middle of it and persuaded them to go back on their bargain.” Taka looked like he was at least listening, and Daniel felt it was unfortunate for Sora that she went on, “Besides, what do you care? You’re Manarian now.”

“You don’t understand much.” The jumper pitched hard enough that Daniel would have fallen out of the chair if he weren’t cuffed to it.

“Watch what you’re doing!” Sora snapped.

Taka’s eyes were back on the console, but the jumper’s nose was down, and they were losing altitude fast. “I am,” he said. “But something’s wrong! The controls aren’t responding.”

Sora turned on Daniel, brandishing her pistol. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I’ve been sitting here handcuffed, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“McKay,” Sora said. “He must have sabotaged the ship somehow.”

“It’s not responding to my commands,” Taka said. “I can’t bring up the displays anymore.”

“Fix it!”

“How?”

“I might be able to fix it if you let me get to the controls,” Daniel said.

“Not a chance.”

“Then we’re going to crash,” he pointed out. The ground was coming up fast.

“Damn it!” Sora scrambled out of her chair and unfastened the cuff on his leg.

“Handcuffs too.”

She bent to unlock them left-handed, holding her pistol on him while she did.

“We’re going down!” Taka yelled.

“All right!” Sora said as she freed his hands. “Get this thing working again!”

“I’ll do my best,” Daniel said, and grabbed for her gun hand.

She brought her knee up hard, and he just barely managed to twist enough for it not to connect in a delicate location. He kicked off from the chair, knocking her down under his weight and rolling as she scrambled to get on top, fighting him for the pistol.

The jumper pitched wildly, and Taka was cursing at the controls. They were going down, and Daniel hoped fervently that Taka could bring the jumper in for a landing that wouldn’t kill them all. If he could, he had at least one advantage — he’d probably been in a lot more crashing ships than Sora had.

There was a crash and a sickening series of thuds, the jumper skipping like a stone across the ground. The impact sent them both tumbling toward the back of the compartment, and Sora’s grip on the pistol loosened. Daniel kicked it away and drew his own pistol from her belt, jamming the muzzle against the small of her back as the jumper tore its way through the landscape and shuddered to a halt.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Taka! Throw me the radio!” There was a moment when he wasn’t sure if the man was still conscious, and then he turned slowly in his seat, wincing as he stretched his limbs. None of them seemed to be broken from his expression.

“Do what he says,” Sora said.

Taka put his head to one side. “I’m beginning to wonder what the point is of doing what you say.”

“Because he’ll shoot me.”

“And then I’ll be a lot worse off, right?”

Daniel stretched his left arm and managed to snag one of the pairs of handcuffs. The effort was painful, but while his muscles protested, he didn’t feel the unique grinding pain of broken bones. He snapped the handcuffs around Sora’s wrists and held onto her by them, although she strained against the cuffs and tried to twist away.

“Toss me the radio,” he said again.

Taka picked up the radio and held onto it. “I’m not sure why I should.”

“Let me talk to my team, and you can walk away from this.”

“I still have work for you,” Sora said. “All right, this isn’t going the way it was supposed to, but when we get out of this—”

Daniel jerked her hands back harder behind her back. “You’re just a bomb-proof optimist, aren’t you?”

“If I gave up every time things didn’t seem to be going my way, I’d be dead by now,” Sora said. It was the first thing she’d said that he felt he could sympathize with.

“Right, fine, you’re going to escape any minute now,” Daniel said. “But you might not want to bother trying to talk Taka into coming with you if you’re relying on him to activate Ancient technology for you. It looks to me like your Asgard genetic manipulation wasn’t as permanent as you wanted it to be.”

“This doesn’t prove that,” Sora said. “There’s probably something wrong with your ship. I still think your people sabotaged it.”

“Try for yourself,” Daniel said. He stood with caution, stepping well back from Sora so as not to give her the opportunity to kick his feet out from under him, and pulled down a life signs detector from where it was stowed. He tossed it to Taka. “Turn this on.”

“Don’t do that, you idiot, it’s a trap,” Sora said, but Taka was already frowning at the device in his hand.

“Nothing’s happening.”

“I’m guessing that whatever the Asgard device did to you, it’s wearing off.”

Sora frowned at him. “What do you know about it?”

“I know that every time we’ve tried using alien technology that we only sort of understood, it’s only sort of worked.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can do the same procedure again.”

“Maybe. If it works more than once on the same person. And if the time that it lasts isn’t variable — you really don’t want a pilot who’s going to suddenly stop being able to fly the ship at some random moment. And if Taka’s still interested in working for you, which isn’t seeming like such a great gig right now, whatever you promised him.”

Taka put down the life signs detector and picked up the radio.

“You give me the radio,” Daniel said. “I call my team. We talk this out.”

Taka hesitated, and then threw Daniel the radio. He turned it on to hear Teyla’s voice on the radio, the words sharp and tight.

“—hear me? We have restored power to the gate. Please respond.”

“We’re here,” Daniel said. “We had some problems with the jumper.”

“Dr. Jackson,” Teyla said, and he could hear the relief in her voice. “Are you hurt?”

“Only the usual bumps and bruises. Sora’s out of commission for the moment—”

“I’m warning you, let me go!” Sora demanded.

“—as you can hear, and I’m having a little talk with her pilot about where we go from here. Actually, he’s Satedan, as it turns out, so maybe he’d like to talk to Ronon. Ronon, why don’t you tell Taka why getting mixed up in this woman’s apparent personal vendetta against Ladon Radim is a fairly lousy idea?”