Jo Graham - Homecoming

Then what do you want me to do? Teyla blinked hard. There was no course that was not wrong, no choice that a good person could make. She knew what she should do. She should stay here with her people, raise her son as an Athosian should be raised, in the bosom of the people. She should not walk away.

“I want you to release me.”

Her eyes flew to his, but there was no bitterness there, only understanding.

“Teyla, we came together briefly in sorrow. You mourned your friend Kate, and I mourned those I had lost. We were friends who took comfort in one another. And that was as it should be, that you should find hope in me and I in you.” He looked down at Torren, playing in the entrance of the tent. “Our son is a gift unlooked for, to both of us. But he is not enough to bind us together when the paths of our lives have never run together. I cannot live in your world, among your white towers, and you do not belong here.”

“I am not my mother,” she said, though her voice choked. “I am not a woman who just walks away.”

“You are not,” he said. “And I am not asking to keep Torren here with me, but only to see him and have him stay with me from time to time, that he may know me as well. I am not trying to take your son from you, Teyla. But this…” Kanaan shook his head. “We were not meant to be together. It has been more than a year that we have lived apart, for first one good reason and then another. But I think we both know that we will never share a bed again.”

“Kanaan, if that is what… I can do better. When next I come here, when there is more time…”

He put his hand on her wrist, her old friend. “Teyla, can you honestly tell me that your heart is not given to another? Or even that it is free?”

She dropped her eyes. “That does not matter.”

“It matters very much.” He took both her hands in his. “I loved my wife, Tre, who is dead. I have known real love, love as deep as the seas. Do you think I could be content with the pretense of it? Do you think I am a man who would wish that? Let us release one another, in honesty and friendship.”

“I have failed,” she said, and the bitterness pooled in her throat. “I am no better than Tegan Who Walked Through Gates, hurting those who came into her path as unthinking as the flood dashes away the autumn’s leaves. I have ruined everything and made everyone miserable.”

“Nothing is ruined while life and hope lasts,” he began.

And then.

Their heads lifted as one, like startled prey animals which have suddenly caught the scent of the hunter. On the ground before the tent, Torren opened his mouth in a long scream.

“Wraith!” Teyla shouted.

They were too far from the gate to hear or see the whoosh of the Stargate opening, but Darts traveled very, very fast indeed.

“Wraith!” Kanaan yelled. “Halling! They have come through the Ring!”

Rodney swore, he and John turning at the same time.

Teyla swept the screaming toddler up with one arm, the one not carrying the P90, and thrust him at Kanaan. “Run!” she said. “Run away from the tents and get down. The Darts will be drawn by our fire!”

“Everybody scatter!” Halling yelled, his voice carrying. “Into the fields! Get into the woods! It’s a Culling!”

Kanaan did not hesitate. Grabbing Torren about the waist, he sprinted for the long grass and the trees beyond it, Torren reaching back red-faced. “Momma!”

His cry was the last thing she heard as she turned around.

“Spread out!” John shouted. “Four points! Get them in a crossfire! Lorne, go left!”

Four points. Darts cull in a straight line, their beam sweeping up what is directly beneath the ship. Taking fire from four points, they could not dive on more than two at once, leaving the others free to fire. The trick was for the two dived upon to get out of the way. Instinct says to run, but running before a Dart is folly. Instinct says to throw oneself to the ground, but that makes no difference. What one must do is at odds with instinct — one must dodge at 90 degrees to the culling beam. Once one is out of the narrow path, the Dart cannot touch one, no matter how close it comes.

“Incoming!” Ronon shouted.

There were three Darts, sleek and bright in the afternoon sun, coming in low and swift.

John stood right in their path, in the middle of the square, with Ronon beyond him and to the right.

“Rodney?” Teyla yelled.

“Got it.” John and Ronon were taking the fire. She and Rodney and Lorne’s men must make the shot.

The first Dart swooped low, making the sickening sound of a predator in a dive that so innately unnerved humans. She did not look at John. She did not watch to see if he and Ronon would get out of the way. She waited for the shot.

Just there. The bright tracers blazed away, like moments elongating, scoring along the wing, diagonally across the Dart’s underbelly, snapping off steel.

“Teyla!” Ronon called, fresh as though he were having a good time. “Second.”

The second Dart dove on her, and it took all her will to wait until the last moment, until it was too late to change course at that speed. And then she flung herself to the left, the culling beam missing her by feet as the Dart swept overhead. There was the rattle of fire, and she saw it lurch, saw the beam generator sparking and the blue field died.

“Good shot, Ronon!” John yelled from wherever he was.

The third Dart went into a dive. Gunfire rattled off it, one wing smoking as something hit. Lorne jumped clear as the blue beams deployed.

After that there was no thinking, just movement rehearsed so often as to become instinct. Eight shooters on three Darts was not good, but it bought time for the Athosians to flee, and the Darts seemed to be intent on the team. Again and again they dove on them, ignoring easier targets — reapers trapped in the open in the field, a few elders who could not run fast, a child who broke from cover and would have been snapped up, had the Dart’s pilot not been intent on Rodney.

The P90 heated against her shoulder. Teyla put in the last clip, swinging about as another dove on John. He threw himself flat just past the edge of the beam.

Some part of her mind that was still thinking thought it was odd to ignore so many other targets, but perhaps they wanted to get rid of resistance first. It was not usually a Wraith technique, but they did adapt to new situations all too well.

“Rodney!” One of the Darts was diving on him.

“I see it!” Rodney dodged left ninety degrees, gun in hand. Too late she saw what was wrong. The one diving had no beam generator. It was the one that had taken fire from Ronon. It was a decoy. The second Dart, just behind it, deployed its culling beam in parallel.

“Rodney!”

Ronon’s fire hit the third Dart. Something blew out, and it twisted in the air, turning and lifting as the pilot struggled for control, heading back toward the Stargate. One of Lorne’s men fired, dark smoke trailing from its wing as it passed overhead.

The first Dart pulled out of the dive, the second following after, nearly clipping the treetops as it went, driving hard and low for the gate.

John was beside her, chest heaving with exertion, sweat running down his face, making tracks in the dust. The three Darts raced for the Stargate, a streak of smoke behind them.

“Everybody ok?” John asked.

Teyla choked and could hardly get the words out. “No. They got Rodney.”

It was getting solidly dark by the Stargate, the night closing in outside the circle of the lights they had brought from Atlantis. John paced the edge of the circle, P90 still tight against his chest, biting back the need to ask what kind of progress they were making. Zelenka was doing everything he could, laptop patched into the DHD, reading the buffer, Halling and Teyla at his side, checking the addresses as they appeared. Ronon had taken a Marine team to search the village perimeter, not because any of them really expected to find anything, but because he had to do something. Beckett was back at the village, tending to the few injuries, mostly cuts and bruises, one badly sprained ankle when one of the young women had stepped wrong as she fled. He knew that, knew that the jumper they’d brought through just in case would report if and when they found anything, and it still took everything he had to keep from asking again.