Amy Griswold - The Lost

The smaller one was screaming something, calling out to him or to her fallen packmate, he did not know. That one lay insensible, blood seeping from his ears, stunned again and again, his head lolling back. Quicksilver blasted him again for good measure. This is for Dust, he thought. This. Above, the ship’s alarms began to shriek in a high voice, overhead lights slowly warming.

Bright Venture was waking up.

The George Hammond swept wide, rail guns blazing as she burned a streak down the hive ship’s lateral surface, rotating on her own axis as she spun off the end, flipping around to come about for a dorsal pass. A cloud of Darts parted before her, reforming behind her and peppering her aft shields with flowers of fire.

Sam knew better than to direct her helmsman. The reason Lt. Chandler was a helmsman was because he was a hot pilot, hotter than she’d ever been. And so, other than the imperceptible tightening of her hands on the arms of the chair, she did not react as they rolled through a flashing waterfall of fire, diving behind the hive ship’s bulk.

Depressurization alarms must be hooting all over the hive ship, inner compartments sealing. Their sensors read massive damage. If they could just refrain from depressurizing sections where they had people aboard…

“Sheppard?” she said into her radio. “Status report, please.” There was no answer.

“Ma’am, aft shield at 40 per cent,” Major Franklin said from the station behind her. “We are rerouting power, but it appears that the starboard ventral emitter has taken physical damage.”

Trouble, but by far not a mortal wound.

“Sheppard? Status report.”

The Hammond dove, rotating 280 degrees as she evaded another flight of Darts.

“The hive ship is powering up!” Franklin said, his voice cracking as he bent over his display. “All systems are coming online!”

That was their cue. Once the hive ship’s defenses were active, their team would be trapped.

The Hammond shook, shuddering from bow to stern.

Sam snapped about as a shower of sparks flew behind her. “What was that?”

“The damaged starboard ventral emitter blew, ma’am,” Franklin called. “We’ve lost the entire rear shield!”

For a moment Sam wished she were the type who swore under pressure. Power reroutes they could do. External physical damage was beyond their repair capability in the middle of a battle, and depending on the damage possibly more than they could do without significant down time at a base.

“Cut the power to the damaged sections,” Sam directed. “So we don’t have anymore surprises back there.” She cupped her headset. “Sheppard? We’re out of time.”

Ronon’s voice came through loud and clear, blasts and the sound of gunfire behind him. “Sheppard’s down.”

Ronon fired and fired again, and Wraith after Wraith fell, but they kept coming, their stunner fire spitting down the corridor toward him. He flattened himself against the wall as best he could. No way to get past so many of them, and they would be pouring down the corridor from the other direction now, cutting off their escape.

“I can’t give you any more time,” Carter said over the radio. “We’re about to open a hyperspace window. I can beam you out now , or you’re going to have to find your own way home.”

No more holding them off. He crouched and dived in the door of the room, rolling as he came up, taking in a series of images — Sheppard down, unmoving, Teyla swiveling her P90 toward him, startled by the sudden movement — and then he saw Rodney, firing off blast after blast from the Wraith stunner in his hand.

It was Rodney, and at the same time he had the ridged markings of a Wraith’s face beneath bone-white hair, and the hand clenched around the stunner had claws. It was Rodney, firing again and again at Teyla as if he was afraid to stop. The table she was sheltering behind crawled with stunner fire.

For a moment Ronon froze. It was like something out of a nightmare, and for a moment he thought this can’t be real . Then he knew it was, and even as he rolled to one knee, raising his pistol, he remembered watching a Wraith writhe in restraints in the isolation room, watching its face become human as their engineered virus worked its destruction through its body.

“Our hyperspace window is open,” Carter said in his ear, her voice level like the seasoned soldier she was. “You’ve got about ten seconds before we jump to hyperspace.”

“Rodney!” Teyla cried. “It is us, we are here to help you — ”

Rodney threw himself behind a piece of equipment, and Ronon’s shot stung harmlessly against the metal. He was crouching to dive over the tables, preparing to roll wildly out of the way of the stunner blasts when he got close enough.

“Ronon!” Teyla called, and he heard the thunder of her P90, spraying the doorway behind him with bullets. He fired once, twice, and readied himself to spring.

“We’re leaving now,” Carter said. “Ronon, make the call.”

With Sheppard down, they didn’t have a pilot, but it didn’t matter. They’d never make it out of this room. He wanted to stay, to keep fighting to get to Rodney, even if all he could do was die with his teammate. It was the right thing for a soldier to do.

It wasn’t the right thing for the team leader to do. Teyla was still firing, pausing only to jam another clip home. Sheppard lay unmoving, one hand outflung as if in sleep. He couldn’t throw away the lives of his team. He had to keep them safe.

“Pull us out,” he said, his voice rough in his own ears. “Carter, do it now!”

He felt the pull of the transport beam, his stomach twisting as the world changed around him. They were on the bridge of the Hammond , Sheppard sprawling across the deck, Teyla dropping to her knees next to him. His face was pale and streaked with blood.

“Get a medical team up here,” Carter said. “Franklin, punch it!”

There was a slight jolt, and the view outside the forward window changed, stars elongating into the azure of the hyperspace field as the Hammond passed through the window, leaving the battle behind.

“He was hit by a stunner many times,” Teyla said urgently, her hands on Sheppard’s neck, checking the pulse at his throat. “I think he is not breathing as he should.”

“They’re on their way,” Carter said. “What happened?”

Ronon didn’t think either of them wanted to say it. It was Teyla who finally answered.

“He is Wraith,” she said flatly. “Rodney is a Wraith.”

The blue shifted stars of hyperspace slid past the George Hammond , while within the thin envelope of the hyperspace field a spacesuited repair crew swarmed over her surface, conducting a visual inspection of the damaged shield array.

Master Sergeant Luciano, the Hammond’s chief structural engineer, frowned at his captain through the video link to the station beside her command chair. “It’s not good, ma’am. The shield emitter is basically blown away. There’s nothing left but the twisted backing plate attached to the brackets. We’ve got replacement internal electronic components for repair purposes aboard, but we’re going to need a full machine shop to rebuild the titanium alloy casing.”

“And until then we’ve got no rear shields,” Sam said, her fingers drumming on the chair arms. “I read you loud and clear, Sergeant. Bring your crew in. We’ll see what we can rig up in Atlantis. They’ve probably got what we’ll need for the casing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It wouldn’t be that simple, of course. Rebuilding a major external system was not going to take a few hours. It might — might — take a few days at best. More likely a week or more. Still, it was something well within their capabilities to do. The Hammond carried titanium alloy hull plates for repairing breaches. The problem would be machining the spare hull plates into the proper structure for all the fiddly little parts that made up Asgard shielding. It was a week’s work for skilled people with Atlantis’ facilities to use.