James Swallow - Nightfall

Rodney jogged to keep up with the colonel. “Boy, is he pissed off,” he told Jennifer out the side of his mouth. “Sheppard? Sheppard!”

“Colonel!” called Keller. “What are we going to do now?”

He shot them a look. “I tell you what you’re going to do. You two are going to go back to Jaaya’s place and stay there. Radio me if anything even remotely freaky happens, got it?”

McKay’s head bobbed. “Where are you going?”

“Stargate,” came the reply. “This has just become a rescue mission.”

The three of them rounded a thick trunk, passing out of sight of the guard on the door, who watched them go as he nursed the spreading bruise on his shoulder. He worked the muscle to get a little feeling back into it, and as soon as he was certain they were gone, he found a shadowed corner and removed a small roll of message paper and an ink-stone from his robes. He listened carefully at the window of the lodge, and then, taking care to be certain he was not seen, he scribbled quick, careful sentences on a length of the tissue-thin paper.

When he was done, the guard crossed the walkway to a nondescript lodge facing to the west. He tapped on a window blind and it was opened by an elderly woman, her tanned face like old leather. She gave him a nod; they knew each other well. “Here,” he said, handing her the slip of paper. “Soonir must see this, before high sun.”

The old woman nodded once and plucked the message from his fingers.

The metallic-electric rattle of the gate chevron sequence cut right through the web of thoughts in Samantha Carter’s mind. Without even pausing to think, she was out of her chair even as Chuck’s voice called out over the tower’s intercom.

“ Unscheduled off-world activation !”

She still had the datapad she’d been reading and the coffee mug she’d been sipping from as she crossed the short skybridge from her office to the control tier. Carter glanced down into the gate room below and saw the third, then fourth chevron illuminate in clusters of brilliant blue dots.

“We’re not expecting anyone back,” she began. It wasn’t a question, but she got an answer anyway.

“Not for another few hours.” Radek Zelenka was at the main screen at the back of the room.

Carter put down her burden, frowning. She’d been around to see more spontaneous gate openings than anyone else on Atlantis, and still every time it happened there was a tightening in her chest that never went away. It was like the sound of your telephone ringing at three in the morning; unexpected and alarming, with that little voice in the back of your head telling you This isn’t going to be good .

The wormhole coalesced and thundered into shimmering solidity, the flash of the city’s iris field hazing over the Stargate a split-second later.

The technician looked up from his console. “I have Colonel Sheppard’s IDC, ma’am.”

Carter leaned over him and spoke into the radio. “Colonel? You’re early.”

If Sam suspected that something was amiss, then the tone of John Sheppard’s voice over the open channel confirmed it for her immediately. “ More like too late, Colonel. We got a situation here. ”

Zelenka gave her a worried look as he came closer. “Is everyone all right?”

“ Teyla and Ronon are M-I-A. We think they’ve been kidnapped. ”

Her lips thinned. “By the locals?”

Sheppard paused before answering. “ Not exactly. It’s a little more complicated than that. ”

“It usually is…” murmured Radek.

Carter spoke quickly to the technician. “Major Lorne and his team are on standby alert, get them up here, double-time.” Off his nod, Sam keyed the radio again. “Tell me what you can, Colonel.”

She could almost hear him frowning. In a lot of ways, Sheppard reminded her of Jack O’Neill; both men had their own casual, unconventional ways of command, both inspired loyalty and respect among their people, and both officers took the safety of their team personally. His voice was laced with frustration and annoyance as he gave a terse report on the situation on M9K-153. Carter listened with growing concern as Sheppard laid out his impressions of the locals, these Heruuni, and their stories of a mysterious guardian force, of ritualized abductions.

By the time he was done she had dozens of questions pressing at the front of her thoughts, but she held them back. “What’s your evaluation, John?” she asked, giving Major Lorne a glance as the officer came up the stairs in full battle gear, ready for deployment.

“ Takkol and his elders aren’t going to give us any help, ” said Sheppard. “ And every second we waste, the trail goes colder. If we’re going to find Teyla and Ronon, we need to do it ourselves. ”

Lorne’s eyes narrowed as he caught the last of Sheppard’s words. Carter knew without having to ask that the major would understand what was expected of him. “I concur,” she said to the radio. “I’m sending a support team through the gate now. Sweep the area and report back as soon as you have anything.”

“ Roger that ,” Sheppard replied. “ I’ll be waiting .”

“Should we take a Puddle Jumper?” Lorne asked.

Sam shook her head. “Let’s hold off on that option for a moment. If we come through with too much firepower, there’s no telling how the locals —”

“Or this Aegis …” broke in Zelenka.

“…Will react,” Carter concluded. “You have a go, Major.”

Lorne saluted and rejoined his men, snapping out orders as he went.

Zelenka pushed his glasses back along his nose with a finger and frowned again. “Colonel Carter… Do you think an aggressive posture is the best one?”

“One squad of men isn’t aggressive, Radek,” she replied. “It’s prudent. If you have a better suggestion, I’d be happy to hear it.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.” But she could read the unspoken addendum in his eyes; he’s wondering how Elizabeth Weir would have dealt with this .

Sam’s civilian predecessor cast a long shadow over Atlantis; the woman had guided this place with intelligence and compassion through that difficult and lonely first year, and then for two more, facing challenges from all sides. And while Weir had never been one to shy away from making the hard calls, Carter still felt, even after weeks in that office, that there were some of the non-military staff who saw her as less a scientist and more a soldier. In truth, she was both, and Sam would have been hard-pressed to chose between which calling meant the most to her. Not for the first time, Carter wished she’d had more of a chance to get to know Elizabeth before the woman had been lost to them, if only for any advice she might have shared.

From below, the gate murmured as Lorne’s unit stepped into the ripples, and for a long moment Sam felt a tingle in the base of her feet; she was almost rocking on her heels, drawn by the glow of the open conduit. I want to go with them.

Outwardly, she was impassive, but inside Sam tried to push the thought away without success. It felt odd to stand here and send her people through the Stargate on mission after mission, to stand here and watch and wonder what they would be confronted with. Carter was no stranger to the burdens of command, but her duties had always taken her out there . Atlantis was the first time she found herself with the responsibility of staying behind, and with each passing day in that role she had new respect for Hammond, O’Neill and Landry, her former commanders; officers who had done what she did now, sending men and women into the unknown, silently hoping that each order they gave would be the right one.