Melissa Scott - The Inheritors

The decking rattled, the entire ship shuddering. Alarms blared — atmosphere leak, power loss, life support failure — and Ember grabbed the human by the shoulder. "We must get to your jumper —"

Another shot hit, and more alarms blared, gravity wavering for an instant before it was restored.

"If we can," the human said, grimly, but scrambled ahead of him up the narrow corridor.

Smoke swirled around Waterlight like a living thing, twisting through the corridors of Queen Death's hive ship. Only Bronze was with her now. The last drone was dead, and Waterlight had watched Thorn twist before her, shielding her with his shredded body. The air was acrid and stank.

Ahead the bulkhead door was closed. “We must open it,” Waterlight said.

Bronze nodded. His hair had fallen from its clasp and fell over his shoulders, matted with blood and other things. “I will go first,” he said, his hand on the door override.

“I will let no more men die for me,” Waterlight said. “Because I am queen.”

Her hand was on his wrist, and so she knew what he did not need to say. Not because she was queen, but because she was Waterlight. Not a distant hope, a privilege and an ambition, but the friend of all his years since he had come aboard as a thin and half-grown fosterling, his Waterlight, his playmate turned princess, his only family.

“We will go together,” she said, with no word for this strange tenderness that stirred in her. “Whatever there is, we will face it together.”

He nodded and opened the door.

Less smoke but more bodies. A half dozen drones lay dead, and there were two humans as well, one withered to a husk while another bent over him. All dead, Waterlight thought, and then the bending one straightened.

It was a human woman, slight and dark, the muzzle of her weapon rising to track them in an instant.

And then her eyes widened with recognition, the point of the weapon dropping again, her relief shuddering through the air like a palpable thing. A worshipper? But would Death arm her worshippers thus? Yet her relief was almost audible, as though she had said their names aloud. As though she had spoken mind to mind.

"Who are you?" Waterlight said, but even as she spoke, she knew. The feel of the woman's mind was unmistakable, though her face was unfamiliar. Her stance was the same, her height, her way of moving. And her mind. “Steelflower.”

“I am Teyla Emmagan of Atlantis,” the woman said, and her weapon pointed to the floor, standing before them as though she feared nothing. And why should she? She did not see what humans saw, Blade and Queen, bloodthirsty revenants, but frightened younglings barely out of childhood, adult estate thrust upon them by war, stained by the blood of their kin shed to protect them.

“What are you?” Waterlight said. Steelflower and not….

“I am human,” she said. "And I am not. I am Teyla Emmagan of the line of Osprey. A cleverman in days past mingled his blood with that of my human ancestors. And I am Steelflower. I took the name and appearance of a young queen who was lost.”

Bronze frowned. “Why would you do that?” The stunner in his hand did not rise.

She held her hands out to the side. “What man would follow me otherwise?”

Steelflower. And not. A human woman, given the blood of Osprey by a renegade cleverman…. And in that moment the paths of the future and the past stretched out before Waterlight, clear as the path of sun on water, all the twists and turns made straight

“And my kinswoman still,” she said, “Steelflower or not. That cleverman was my mother's brother. Brother and sister there were, and you are of him and I of her, your grandmother and mine the same.”

Teyla blinked. That did indeed surprise her.

“You did not lie to me,” Waterlight said. “Though you meant to.”

“I did not lie when I offered you alliance with Guide,” she said.

Waterlight reached out her off hand, touching it to her wrist, queen to queen. “You are Guide's queen.” And how not? He could not rally men against Death without a queen at his side, no matter how she appeared or what she truly was.

“I am of Atlantis.”

“Who are Guide's allies,” Waterlight said. “But we are united in one thing.”

“We must end this,” Bronze said, his voice surprisingly steady.

Teyla smiled, and her eyes closed for a moment, watering at the corners. “We must,” she said. “Will you face Queen Death with me?”

“We will,” Waterlight said.

There was only one way it could ever end — queen to queen.

The Wraith tried to stop them twice on the way to the engine room, and each time Cadman blasted through, leaving bodies behind them in the dim corridors. Not so many of Radim's, and none of hers, for which she was unabashedly grateful, and plenty of dead drones, which was even better. The hatch that gave access to the engineering spaces was locked, and one of the Genii fiddled for a moment with the controls before he stepped away, shaking his head.

"C4," Cadman said, and reached into her pocket.

"They'll be expecting you to blow the door," Radim said.

She nodded, molding the soft explosive around the central node. "Yes, sir. But I don't see any alternative. I figure we follow up with flashbangs and then rush them."

Radim nodded sharply. "Good idea, Captain," he said, and turned to give the orders.

She set the fuses and waved her people back into shelter, pulling out the remote detonator. She gave them all a final look, her Marines ready with stun grenades, the Genii with their repeating rifles ready, and raised her hand. "Fire in the hole!"

The door blew in with a satisfying whump, and her people followed with the stun grenades, rushing the smoking opening on the heels of the first flat crack. She charged after them, planted her back against the nearest bulkhead to give covering fire. The cavernous space echoed with the sound of gunfire and the roars of the angry Wraith, and then, abruptly, there was silence. She straightened, automatically checking her people. Hernandez was down, and her breath caught, but his face was unchanged and even as she realized that, he began to stir. Just stunned, then, she thought, and kept counting. Four, five more Genii down, and Radim was bleeding from a cut along his forehead, but they were still in business.

"Okay," she said, swinging her P90 so that its light played across the tangle of cords and weird organic stuff in the center of the room. "What next, sir?"

Radim swabbed impatiently at the blood on his face, and pointed to one of the objects protruding from the ceiling. It was wrapped in what looked like vines, or maybe tendons, and a web of more fleshy cording connected it to consoles below it and to the bulkheads to either side. Within that sheath, a bulbous cylindrical core glowed softly orange. "That's the hyperdrive. If we can disable that, Queen Death won't be able to escape."

Cadman reached into her pocket, pulled out another packet of C4. "Can do, sir."

“The control room is this way,” Teyla said mind to mind, sheltering behind the corner of a wall. The corridors of the hive ship were filled with smoke, the air thin. Somewhere there had been a hull breach now sealed, but the damaged systems had not fully managed to restore life support. Waterlight and Bronze stood behind her, Bronze with a pike taken from a drone, Waterlight with a stunner. They were not what she would choose for a boarding party, but with her radio smashed she could not know where any of the others were.

“How many?” Bronze asked, as Waterlight put her hand to the wall.

Her eyes closed. “Seven, maybe eight.”

“Too many,” Teyla said. She could not rush the control room with three on seven or eight, certainly not with two who were practically children. They must wait for her team. John would be in the chair in Atlantis, but surely Ronon would come soon. Or Cadman. Cadman and a Marine team would be welcome. Surely they were aboard.