Jo Graham - Secrets

“The Ancients believed it would work,” Alabaster said. “No, they knew it would, even if they didn’t care what its use might cost their children.”

“Collateral damage,” Jack said, under his breath. Guide glanced his way, and he realized that Wraith hearing might be better than he’d thought. Or maybe he hadn’t been as discreet as he’d mostly meant to be. “Look, we have people — valuable people — who would be harmed by this thing, assuming it works, just as much as you would. We have some serious disincentives to using it ourselves.”

“But you also have Dr. McKay,” Guide said. “And the redoubtable Colonel Carter. I am sure that if they put their minds to the problem, they could find some work-around solution. And that returns us to the same problem. I say it again, you cannot expect us to leave this weapon with you.”

“And you can’t expect us to just hand it over to you,” Sheppard said. “Come on, Todd, be reasonable.”

“I am entirely reasonable,” Guide answered, and Jack was sure that expression was a grin.

“We actually have more pressing problems to deal with,” Woolsey said. “Specifically, Queen Death. Forgive me if I’m blunt, but if we don’t work together to stop her, this putative weapon is going to become irrelevant to all of us.”

Alabaster’s gaze shifted, and Jack hid a grin of his own. Gotcha, he thought, and gave Guide his most limpid stare. Guide gave a thin smile, and dipped his head.

“As you say, Death is the more immediate problem. And I am willing to hold to my part of our agreement — for now.” His eyes swept the table, settled on Carter. “But I say to you in all sincerity that it would be much better to resolve this issue before we go much further down this road.”

“We’ll continue to talk,” Carter said, after a moment, and Woolsey nodded.

“Yes. There is still quite a bit to be discussed, and I’m sure we can come to some agreement regarding the device.”

“Yes,” Guide said. “I’m sure we can.” He looked around the table again. “But, for the moment — perhaps it would be wise to pause and consider.”

“And you will want time with Alabaster and your grandson,” Woolsey said. “Of course. We can continue this later, perhaps after you’ve had a chance to talk to Dr. Keller.”

Jack tuned out the rest of the courtesies — he could do that sort of thing in his sleep — and timed his departure so that he was at Carter’s shoulder when they left the conference room. “Careful, Carter,” he said in her ear. “I think the big green guy likes you.”

She blinked, gave him a startled glance — what, Jack thought, she’d never noticed? He grinned, and slipped past her before she could say anything.

Corporal Hernandez stood at the top of the gateroom steps, his P90 at port arms. “Wraith in the conference room,” he said to the pretty airman on duty at the control board for the Stargate. “Pretty outtahand.”

Airman Salawi — Ayesha, she’d said her name was — gave him a sideways smile. “And Wraith in the control room,” she said, gesturing with her head behind her to where the Wraith kid and Torren were playing quietly with a pile of Legos. Really quietly, especially for Torren.

“Outtahand,” Hernandez said. But then pretty much everything about a deployment off planet was. On the other hand, it was awesomely cool.

The conference room doors opened, Woolsey trying to talk to the Wraith named Todd who was ignoring him and talking to Colonel Carter. Behind them, Colonel Sheppard was talking to the Wraith queen Alabaster as the others crowded out behind.

Teyla slipped around Carter and Todd and came over. “I hope that Torren is behaving?” she asked Dr. Zelenka, who had the duty officer’s post.

“Oddly enough, yes,” Zelenka replied, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “He has been very good.”

Alabaster came up behind, Woolsey and Todd with her. “Darling, I hope you did not disrupt these men’s work,” she said.

The Wraith boy looked up from the Legos cheerfully, waving a complicated construction that might have been supposed to be a puddle jumper. “I was good,” he said aloud, and then with more excitement, “I never met a human boy who could speak to my mind before!”

Teyla’s mouth opened and shut as the Wraith named Todd guffawed.

“Well,” Alabaster said gravely, “He is the son of a queen, and will be a blade of Atlantis.”

Torren beamed up beatifically, Legos in hand.

The night was clear but freezing cold, and Jack O’Neill was glad he’d been forewarned to bring a heavy jacket. Carter was standing on the balcony, her elbows on the rail, her face tilted up to the sky where the aurora played in great sheets of light, red and blue and green chasing each other across the sky, laser bright and almost unreal looking. He’d seen the northern lights many times on Earth, but never anything like this. It was bright enough that the colors shifted slightly across her face like a light show at a concert, her mouth open slightly as though she could drink down light.

Jack came and stood at the rail beside her, shoulders not quite touching. “Penny for your thoughts, Carter?”

“I was thinking that the core composition of this planet must be fascinating for the world’s magnetic field to interact this way with the solar radiation,” she said, that same rapt expression on her face. “I’m wondering if there are exotic compounds in the core mix…” She broke off and glanced at him sideways. “Never mind,” she said apologetically. “What were you thinking?”

“That it’s pretty,” Jack said. He leaned on the rail, cold enough to feel even through his jacket sleeves. “Is this the designated brooding balcony?”

She snorted. “Yep. One of them. This is the senior officers’ brooding balcony, no one below Lorne allowed. The enlisted balcony is off the gateroom and the scientists prefer the one next to the mess.”

Jack grinned. “And the junior officers?”

“Out on the south pier.” Carter lifted her eyes to the lights again, pushing her bangs back from her forehead. “They get to fend for themselves.”

“Builds character,” Jack said.

She rested her elbows on the railing, looking out over the sea. “So.”

“So?”

“The weapon?”

“Oh, that thing.” Jack looked at her sideways. “A thorny Ancient conundrum for our pleasure.”

“Jack.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know what it does.”

“It kills Wraith,” she said seriously.

“Carter, have we ever once, just once, encountered an Ancient device that did exactly what it was intended to do without bizarre and horrible side effects?” He frowned. “It probably kills Wraith and every other sentient creature in range, or else it doesn’t kill Wraith and instead it kills sea turtles. Or it blows up every Stargate. Or it destroys all life in the galaxy, like that brilliant weapon on Dakara. There is absolutely no way that we’re turning the damn thing on. Especially since it seems like it’s an untested prototype built by a crazy guy who did genetic experiments on unwilling human subjects. No. Just no.”

“When you put it that way…”

“You and McKay are going to get rid of it,” he said. He looked at her sideways again, and she was smiling. “Which was what you wanted in the first place, right? Only you had to get me out here to put some authority behind it.”

Carter shrugged. “I figured Woolsey might be reluctant to take the chance, especially since the IOA just roasted him.”

“I think you underestimate him,” Jack said seriously.

“I thought you hated him.”

“Eh. He’s ok.” Jack shifted. The rail was cold under his forearms, even through a heavy jacket. “He’s changed a lot. I expect he’d make the call the right way, but now if it ever comes up he can say that I pushed him.”