James Swallow - Nightfall

Sam shook her head. “Actually, I’m programming the hyperspace envelope to extend a little further.” She smiled thinly. “We’re going to take them with us.”

“They won’t let that happen.”

Carter moved a control and the Aegis surged forward on a direct collision course toward the Hive Ship. “I’m not going to give them a choice.” She remembered something another Asgard had once said to her about human ideas, about a crude and brute force approach, and a faint smile crossed her lips. Sam toggled the radio once again. “All hands,” she announced, “brace for impact.”

It was an unexpected and radical tactic.

The Wraith saw the Aegis coming and prepared for a broadside barrage, waiting for the inevitable backlash from the Asgard ship’s weapons. Too late, the sensor pits studding the hull of the Hive Ship detected energy moving not to the vessel’s cannons, but into the drives and the gravity generators and integrity fields. The hammer of the Aegis turned in space and fell toward the hive, starlight gleaming across its surface as it loomed large.

Too late, the worker cadre crew in the Hive Ship’s command nexus realized what the humans were doing, and they tried to retreat. Something like panic spiked through the aliens, and in sympathetic vibration the organic semi-mind of the great Wraith vessel shuddered. Vital seconds lost, they tried frantically to shift the orbit of their craft as the Aegis powered toward them, closing the gap.

Too late, they discovered that they could not flee fast enough. The thrusters flared and the vast beetle-shape of the Hive Ship began a turn, but the Asgard craft was upon them, the force fields of both craft crackling and falling as they pressed into one another, like soap bubbles meeting, distending, popping.

Too late, there was furious screaming and angered cries of alarm; but these were drowned out by the chaos of slow collision as the Aegis slammed into the Hive Ship, dragging its portside wing over the ventral hull of the Wraith craft, ripping it open like a massive talon.

Great chunks of fuselage from both ship were slashed apart and sent spinning away; huge plumes of gas and fluid jetted into the dark. Metal met bone in a screeching, grinding impact that resonated through the decks of both vessels, leaving ragged wounds in either craft.

The force of the impact knocked both craft into a slow spin, the two fighters now locked together in a literal death-grip. Wreathed in clouds of their own wreckage, the massive ships fell toward the edge of Herrun’s outer atmosphere, the first licks of a cherry-red glow flaring across their leading edges.

Teyla Emmagan dragged herself up from the deck where she had fallen and wondered if Samantha Carter had taken leave of her senses. Ramming the Hive Ship could have destroyed them in the attempt, and yet somehow both craft were still functional, and she was still alive. Her hand strayed to her belly and she thought of the tiny life growing there. So faintly, she thought she could sense her child’s weak distress, and she did her best to push back with gentle, soothing emotion; but nothing could draw away from the terrible choice that was closing around them all. With no means of escape from the Aegis , they would be forced to stay with the Asgard ship until it was consumed by the energies of the collapsar weapon. Her breath caught in her chest as she dwelled over that thought; We will save the lives of an entire world, but we will perish in the void. I will never see my beloved Kanaan again, and he will not know his own child, nor will the baby be carried to its birth. She blinked back tears. I am sorry, little one, she told the unborn. I am…

Teyla let out her breath in a gasp. The realization was so hard and fast it felt like a punch to the sternum. There was a chance. Yes! A means of escape! “I have been so blind…” she muttered, turning toward Carter.

Sam’s face was dirty with smoke and among the flickering ruins of the damaged holo-screens, the colonel looked like more like a war-weary specter than a living being. Teyla could see by the expression on her face that Carter had been just as surprised that her tactic worked as anyone.

“The hyperdrive field won’t initiate,” she snapped. “Come on! We’ve got the Wraith right where we want them, come on!” Carter slammed the heel of her hand into the console before her and the screen shimmered, then stabilized. She worked the activation sequence again, her brow furrowed.

Teyla’s panel showed static-laced images of the Aegis ’s bow, rendered in simple digital frames. As she watched, a spill of blinking red indicators swarmed around the ragged edges of the ship’s damaged zones, and began to penetrate inside. The hazy graphic reminded her of screens in Atlantis’s infirmary, images showing viral colonies infecting healthy flesh. “The Wraith are reacting,” she said, “warrior drones are massing near the hull breaches. They’re coming aboard.”

“I’ll say this for them, they’re tenacious,” growled Carter. Once more the hyperdrive activation sequence stalled in mid-program and she hissed through her teeth.

The constant background shudder through the deck plates was now a steady throbbing rumble; the ships were falling into the atmosphere, doubtless cutting a fiery streak across the sky of Heruun that could be seen across the planet.

Sam shot her a look. “One way or another, we’re going to end this. Either out there, or we burn up on re-entry.”

Teyla shook her head. “No, Colonel, I think there is another way.”

Carter blinked in surprise. “I’m open to any ideas, but make it quick.”

“Fenrir’s auxiliary ships, the triangular craft he used to seek out and capture the abductees from Heruun. There may still be some on the hangar level. I believe the craft possess a short-range version of the —”

“Asgard transporter!” Sam’s eyes flashed with sudden understanding. “But the hangar is two decks down from here.” Her face clouded as she glared at her console. “And if I leave this —”

“I was not suggesting you accompany me,” Teyla said, stooping to gather up a fallen weapon from the deck. “I will go alone. If I am successful, then I will transport you away. If not…” She sighed. “It will matter little.” The Athosian gestured around the wrecked command deck. “I can do nothing else to help you here, Colonel. Let me do this.”

Sam saw the determination in her and nodded. “Okay, go. But I’m not having you do it by yourself. I’ll get you some help.”

“She is beyond insane!” shouted McKay, pushing himself off the deck from where he had landed.

The impact of the collision had sent all of them to the floor, even though they had been ready for it. Sheppard dusted himself down and recovered his rifle and a pair of Wraith stunners, nodding slightly. He had to admit, Rodney had a point. Ramming ships… Hadn’t that kinda thing gone out of fashion along with Viking longboats?

“Whatever you think of Carter,” ventured Lorne, “she’s gutsy.”

“I want my guts to remain where they are, inside here!” McKay ranted, patting his belly. “Just because this ship looks like a mallet, you don’t have to use it like one!”

“My grandfather used to say, ‘if all you got is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail’,” said Sheppard. “Never really got what he meant by that until just now.” He blinked and massaged a crick in his neck.

“ Colonel Sheppard, do you read? ” Carter’s voice crackled through the air.

Lorne found the radio where it had fallen and tossed it to his commander. “I read you,” Sheppard said wearily. “We’re all still in one piece down here.”