Jo Graham - The Furies

Ronon slid up almost against the door to the lab, listening. Jennifer, behind him, couldn’t hear anything, but apparently Ronon could because he smiled wolfishly. Here we go, it meant, and he looked almost happy as he activated the door, thundering through with a barrage of shots.

“Hey!” It might have been Rodney’s voice, Rodney’s voice utterly changed. She heard a shout, and then the shots ceased.

Jennifer peered around the door trying to see what had happened.

“Come in,” Ronon said. He sounded satisfied as he keyed the door closed behind her. “Got him. He was by himself.”

Rodney lay unconscious in the middle of the floor, one arm flung up over his face. Jennifer knelt beside him, rolling him carefully onto his back.

His hair was stark white but thicker than it had been, spiking up like an 80s rock star over a green seamed face, the sensory pits along the sides of his nose making his face look thinner and more pinched. His eyes were closed. The pulse at his neck was steady, his skin soft and a little oily under her hands. This was the first time she had touched him in two months, she thought. All the times she’d wanted to and touched empty air.

“He ok?” Ronon knelt down on the other side, carefully not touching Rodney.

“He’s just unconscious,” Jennifer said, nodding sharply. “Good job.” She reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out the hypodermic, carefully rolled up his left sleeve and injected it into the vein. “We should have at least an hour or two with this, but I can’t give him more.”

“It’s not going to take us an hour,” Ronon said. He snapped a bracelet with a radio transmitter around Rodney’s wrist. That would allow the Hammond to lock onto Rodney as easily as to them.

Once again the world wavered, and Jennifer clutched at the floor to keep from falling. Rodney’s face swam before her eyes.

“Jennifer?” Ronon’s voice was concerned.

Her vision darkened. What was this? This wasn’t nerves. This wasn’t a fear reaction. Jennifer opened her mouth but nothing came out. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t see.

“Jennifer?” Sharper now. She thought maybe Ronon had grabbed her shoulder.

And then the world went entirely dark.

“I cannot remove the ZPM,” Teyla said quietly, opening her eyes.

“You mean the ship won’t take your orders?” John said, his hair dripping with sweat as he cradled the P90 in his arms.

“I mean that it cannot be removed,” Teyla said shortly. “It has been completely integrated with the ship’s systems. I cannot imagine who could have done this.”

“I can,” Radek said grimly. “Rodney.”

John swore. He looked at Guide. “And if we pull the damn thing we’ll blow ourselves up?”

“Immediately,” Guide said. “Instantaneously.”

“Ok, not a plan.” John looked back and forth between Guide and Radek. “Can you set it to overload? That will take a while to build up, right?”

“It will,” Radek acknowledged. “And yes, it can be set to overload.”

“You will destroy the ship, Sheppard,” Guide said. “And all else who are too near.”

“It is what Steelflower would do,” Teyla said. “To deny it to Death in revenge for her treachery.”

Guide looked at her, and she felt his words as much as heard them in her mind. *You are Steelflower in truth.*

*Yes,* she said. *I am.*

“I will set it to overload,” Guide said, coming around her to stand at the terminal. “We will have four minutes from when I am finished.”

“Understood,” John said, keying his radio on. “Ronon? What’s your status? We need to get a move on.”

The Hammond swam through a barrage of shots like a shark through a school of remoras, iridescent fire eerily beautiful as it danced around them, flaring blue off their shields. But the fire was less than before. Fully half the hive ship’s batteries were disabled.

And yet it had not come without a price. “Forward shields at 40 percent,” Major Franklin shouted over the din of equipment and people on the Hammond’s bridge. “Dorsal shield at 70 percent.”

“Understood.” The captain was at the engineer’s station, Lieutenant Mills having been removed from the bridge with serious burns on his hands when the relays overloaded and sent feedback through the control panels, shorting out with a massive electrical surge. It was the dorsal shield that Sam was worried about. The lighter hull plating Dr. Kusanagi had used for repairs wouldn’t hold against a single shot if the energy shields failed.

The Darts still swarmed, but they were fewer as well. Hocken’s 302s were doing a good job. But even as she glanced up, Sam saw one of them take a wing hit, shearing through the superstructure and clipping the entire wing off. The 302 spun out of control, plumes of gas venting into vacuum. From the wing tank, Sam thought analytically at the same moment that she turned to Franklin. “Beam that pilot out of there!”

“I’m trying, ma’am,” Franklin said, an expression of concentration on his face as he bent over the board.

Sam looked back at the engineering board, toggling power. If she pulled it out of some other systems she could reinforce that dorsal shield…

“The infirmary reports they have Colonel Hocken aboard,” Franklin said, an expression of momentary triumph on his face.

“Good job.”

The helmsman put the Hammond hard over, looping entirely about some arbitrary center point, utter confusion for targeting aboard the hive ship. Every shot in the barrage was a clean miss. That took the stress off the shields for a moment, Sam thought. Good deal.

“Ma’am?” Franklin’s voice rose above the noise. “We have hyperspace windows opening.”

Oh not good, Sam thought, moving quickly from the engineering station to her own where she could get the other readouts. She could see the wavering, as though a fog had crossed the stars, then the northern lights shimmer as the windows opened not so far away at all. She could see for herself. She didn’t have to wait for Franklin to say it.

“We have two additional hive ships and three Wraith cruisers coming out of hyperspace.”

Queen Death’s reinforcements had arrived.

“Sheppard, we’re out of time.” John’s headset crackled with Sam’s voice. “We’ve got six, repeat six, of Queen Death’s ships out here. We’ve got to pull you out of there.”

John looked at Todd bent over the interfaces that controlled the ZPM, still setting up the overload. “Roger, we’ve got you. Give us another minute here. We’re setting up an overload.”

“We may not have a minute.” Sam’s voice was calm, but she’d never say that lightly. “You’ve got until we get in range.”

John looked at Todd. “How long?”

“Almost there,” Todd said, his eyes still closed in the interface.

“Ronon?” John opened his radio again. “Ronon, do you have Rodney? The Hammond is going to have to pull us out.”

“I’ve got a problem,” Ronon said. “Keller’s out cold.”

“Keller?” John looked at Teyla, who seemed equally confused. “Did she get stunned?”

“No, just collapsed. She’s having some kind of seizure.” His voice sounded ragged.

It only took John a second. “Ok. We’re going to work our way back to you. Stay where you are and we’ll come for you. You’ve got the beacons activated, right?”

“Yeah,” Ronon said.

“It is done,” Todd said, lifting his head. The ZPM in its cradle was glowing brightly. “We have four minutes.”

John opened his transmitter again. “Sam? Now is a good time.”

“I can’t do that right now.” The Hammond twisted and dove again, trying to get through. The cruisers had engaged immediately, coming in to form a screen around the damaged hive ship. Each half and a bit the size of the Hammond , they didn’t pack as much punch, but there were three of them. “The Asgard beams are short range.”