Melissa Scott - The Inheritors

There was a shriek and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. And then he fell off whatever he'd been lying on, landing solidly on scuffed linoleum smelling like disinfectant.

Not an afterlife, Rodney thought, as his wrist hit the floor and he screamed.

"He just appeared there," someone said. "I didn't see the beam shimmer."

Another voice, also male, distracted. "Well, he must have been beamed aboard from one of the 302s." A shoulder under his right arm, an arm in scrubs. "Easy, there. You're okay. Just take deep breaths." The arm shifted. "McNair, help me get him up on the table. Probably hypoxia. That's what the 302 pilots usually have."

"He's not in a flight suit."

"I broke my wrist," Rodney said through gritted teeth. The pain was blinding, the overhead lights right in his eyes.

"I see." Even, medical voice. "Okay, just take deep breaths. Let's get an oxygen mask on you. McNair?"

"Where am I?" Rodney managed before the mask came over his face.

"You're safe aboard the George Hammond ."

Lorne brought Pride of the Genii in on the tail of Death's hive, forward guns blazing. There were no more drones, hadn't been for what seemed like forever, but Radim's gunners couldn't miss at this range. The shots struck home, blasting metal and fittings from the hive's engines. The hive swerved, and Lorne let it go, putting his ship between it and Todd's other hive. It was drifting, damaged, but even as he watched a new light flared in the central engine bell. Powering up again, the Pride whispered, minimal maneuver engines and full power to the guns. The strange hive, though, the one that had jumped out of hyperspace at the last possible minute — it hadn't been in good shape to start with — was starting to show real damage, atmosphere leaking from a hull breach forward. The Hammond had her hands full, the last of her 302s on board but now surrounded by a swarm of Darts. Some of them were Todd's, Lorne thought, but there was nothing he could do about them, any more than there had been anything he could do for Rodney.

No, he thought, and felt the Pride gather herself before he'd even been able to articulate his commands. There was nothing anyone could have done for Rodney, not at that distance, and if there'd been any other way, McKay of all people would have found it. So that was the only option, and the only thing he could do now was make it count. Todd's hive was turning, driving Death's hive toward the Pride . Lorne calculated the angles in a glance, and dove on Death's hive.

Radek worked his way deeper into the crawlspace, pushing his flashlight ahead of him. Even he could barely fit between the heavy bundles that were the explosives, but he could see the fuse just ahead of him, a lumpy oval with half a dozen knotty cords reaching out along the crawlspace. It showed inert, unpowered, but he paused long enough to direct a scanner at it. There was still no sign of power, and he hauled himself another meter further, until he could reach the box.

It was a remote trigger, he thought, intended to take a signal from the pressure sensors on the hull or from a following hive. But the pressure sensors were disabled, he had destroyed the proximity fuses, and the jamming device should override any signal, so all he should have to do was disconnect the cables. Unfortunately, they seemed to grow organically from the box, not plug into a socket; he squirmed around to see how it connected to the nearest explosive, but the connection vanished behind the webbing that held the bomb in place, utterly inaccessible.

Fine, then, he thought, and wriggled himself back so that he could reach the box again. He had brought clippers — they were in fact modified garden shears, acquired from Botany when he was working on Teyla's cruiser — and now he worked them out of his pocket and positioned himself to cut the first cable. The blades bit through, releasing a spurt of unidentifiable liquid, and the cut end thrashed free of his grasp, twisting back as though it was trying to rejoin its other half. Radek caught it, flattened it against the floorplates with all his strength, and at last the flailing died away. He released it carefully, but it seemed to be inert.

And he would have to do that five more times just to defuse this section, and a dozen more just like it, and they were running out of time. He shook his head, and reached for the next cable, clamping down hard to hold it still. It fought back, but now that he knew what to expect, he could hold it. It seemed to die more quickly, or perhaps it was just that he understood the process now, and he moved on to the next.

He was damp and faintly sticky when he had finished, but at least these bombs were defused. A dozen more to go, if he'd scanned them correctly. There had to be a better way, but he didn't know one, hadn't seen it in his hasty scan. Maybe if he looked again, if he had time…. He touched his radio.

"Sergeant. Have we cleared the city?"

"Yes, sir," Ramirez answered.

Okay, that was good. Radek hauled himself up and over the now-disconnected fuse, dragging himself toward the next junction. That would give a little more time, maybe enough to figure out something better than brute force.

"Doc. We've got a Wraith. Ms. Emmagan says he's here to help."

A Wraith. One of Todd's people, presumably, and, yes, someone who really understood how these systems worked would be extremely useful. And if Teyla said he could be trusted, well, Radek would rely on that. "I am on my way."

He worked his way back out of the crawlspace, dropped down to the corridor in front of the waiting Marines. And the Wraith. He was one of the long-haired ones, with two thin wisps of beard trailing from the points of his chin and a tattoo like stylized wings between them. It was hard to read his expression, but Radek thought he might be frowning.

"You are the human clever — engineer?"

"Yes, that is me," Radek answered. "You're here to help?"

The Wraith nodded. "The bombs still need to be defused?"

"Yes." Radek stretched for the tablet he had left at the entrance to the crawlspace, turned it so that the other could see the schematic he had built from the Wraith data. The Wraith leaned closer, his hair whispering across the leather of his coat, and in spite of himself Ling raised his P90. Radek gave him an admonishing look, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "This is what I've been able to trace. The explosives are here, all along the spine of the ship, and they are wired to a series of fuses within this central access space. I have cut the connection to the proximity fuses and the pressure sensors on the hull, but the bombs are still armed."

"Presumably they are intended to be detonated remotely," the Wraith said. "But?"

"We have jammed any transmissions," Radek answered. "Or at least any likely frequencies. But —"

"There are still too many fuses," the Wraith said. "There was no central control?"

"I have not found one," Radek answered. "You'd know better than I would where it might be hidden."

The Wraith hissed softly, and reached to turn the tablet for a better view. Radek made himself stand motionless as the feeding hand with its heavy vein slid along the metal next to his own fingers.

"I — this is not a tactic I would recommend," the Wraith said, after a moment.

"Effective, however," Radek said dryly, and thought the Wraith smiled.

"Yes." He looked back at the tablet. "To pull the fuses one by one will take too long."

"I am open to alternatives," Radek said. "If you were doing this, where would you put a master fuse?"

"I wouldn't," the Wraith said. "A kill switch, I think, some way to render the ship inert if it were not used as intended —"