James Swallow - Halcyon

Kelfer's face drained of color. "How… How long until they are all conscious?"

"It's a matter of weeks," he said bleakly. "By then, every single one of the hundred thousand or so Wraiths on board this ship will be awake and hungry."

There was silence in the chamber at Rodney's pronouncement. "Impossible," began Daus, and he turned to glare at Kelfer, searching for support to his denial.

The Halcyon scientist sat heavily on a makeshift chair and ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair. "Great blades," whispered Kelfer, "we are truly doomed."

"I'm not done talking yet," McKay said carefully. "There's more."

"More?" Kelfer yelped. "This nightmare grows worse?"

The main screen flickered and scrolled through a sequence of complex graphics. "I was running a search program I designed through the ship's logs, looking for information, stuff from the last entries before the Wraith crew went into cold-sleep and set the ship down on automatic. I found this." The display showed an image of an ovoid object, clearly of Wraith manufacture, drifting in orbit between two dragonfly-wing solar panels. "This is a beacon, I think. The Hive Ship left it in orbit before it made planetfall on Halcyon however many centuries ago. It went active recently."

"The Lieutenant Colonel was telling the truth," murmured Vekken, "there was a Wraith device circling our world."

Daus gave a curt nod. "Your leader Sheppard claims he destroyed this thing. If he did not lie, then of what import is it?"

McKay grimaced. "Quite a lot, if it sent out any signals to other Wraith Hives!" He pointed at the screen. "If that rang the dinner gong loud enough, then there's likely to be more ships on their way here, other Hive Fleets with thousands more Wraith." The scientist paused for breath. "You are, to put it very mildly, quite screwed."

"Scar!" spat the Magnate, wheeling around in an angry turn. "That filthy alien whoreson! He did this!" Daus advanced menacingly on Kelfer. "You allowed it to happen! It was your fault!"

Vekken saw the question on Rodney's face. "A Wraith, the one we named `Scar', we believe it was the commander of this vessel. There was an accident some time ago and it escaped from its hibernation capsule…"

"It was your blind tampering!" Daus thundered at the scientist. "We never did determine what havoc he wrought while he was loose on this ship! You assured me he did nothing!"

"I… I believed so…" Kelfer managed. The man was collapsing before McKay's eyes, his arrogance vanishing like vapor. "How could I have known?"

"Scar must have set a stealth program running," said Rodney, "we've seen that sort of thing before. It works very slowly, in the background. It can stay undetected for years. He must have set up a protocol to activate the beacon, and it took all this time just to get around to it."

"We captured the Wraith attempting to activate one of their screamer-ships," noted Vekken. "It could not be broken, so we deposited it in the hunt enclosure to become a training target."

"I should have killed him!" snarled Daus. "Killed him and coated his bones in gold for the trophy hall, then hung you from the gibbet, Kelfer!"

"There's no guarantee a signal was sent," Rodney broke in, trying to calm the situation, "the odds are fifty-fifty the beacon was even transmitting!"

Vekken was the only one who remained cool and emotionless throughout the whole display, never once taking his eyes from McKay. "What can we do to protect ourselves, Doctor? You are as much at risk as we."

Sheppard's words echoed in Rodney's mind. They were an off-world team, on terra incognita, and they were not, under any circumstances, to let it get out that the city of Atlantis was intact. But did that apply here? A moment ago McKay told these men that the Atlanteans would have helped them if only they had asked, and now the adjutant was doing just that. He swallowed hard. "First we have to deal with the Hive Ship here." Rodney gestured at the walls. "Back on Atlantis we have access to powerful explosive devices — "

"Back on Atlantis?" Vekken pounced on his words. "You said the city was destroyed. You lied to us."

Rodney shook his head. "Does that matter now? Listen to me, we have atomic weapons that produce destructive force through nuclear fission, bigger than anything you could create."

Kelfer gave a distracted nod. "I am aware of the theoretical science behind such munitions."

"We can detonate a nuclear device inside this ship and destroy it. You won't be able to live nearby for a few hundred years, but I'm guessing we're somewhere pretty remote right now, and it's a better option than a global culling."

Daus became very still. "What you suggest would mean obliterating a hoard of the most advanced technologies on our planet. Your plan would kill every potential Hound on this vessel."

Vekken nodded at his master's evaluation. "Overnight, the Fourth Dynast's military power would be reduced to nothing. Our clan would be inundated with challenges for the throne from every quarter, and we would not be able to answer them with superior force."

"Listen to me," said Rodney, forcing his voice steady. "If you do not destroy this ship, then your throne won't matter. The Wraith will cut across your planet like a plague of locusts and consume everything. You talked to me about compulsion, well, compel this." He advanced a step, and Vekken immediately blocked his way. "You don't have a choice, man! Give up this ship and your Hounds, or watch Halcyon die. You have no other option!"

"You are wrong," said Daus, the practiced conceit of a hundred generations returning to him, denying everything that he did not wish to hear. "I have you. And you'll find another way, or I will order you to be tortured until you die."

The Magnate swept out of the chamber with Vekken trailing behind him.

Rodney's hands contracted into fists and he shouted at the man's back in impotent, incredulous fury. "No! Don't turn away from me, damn it! Can't you understand? You're signing this planet's death warrant!"

"Keep the craft at a higher altitude," demanded Scar, watching Sheppard closely from the co-pilot's seat of the Puddle Jumper. "Do not deliberately attempt to alert the locals to our presence."

John said nothing but inwardly he frowned. "Whatever you say. It's your fare, I'm just the cab driver." Sheppard had been hoping there was an outside chance that a Halcyon defense gunner with and itchy trigger finger might spot the cruising ship and throw a little flak at it, but once they climbed to a couple of thousand feet, the guns the Dynasts used wouldn't even reach the fast-moving vessel. He had successfully deceived the alien about the functionality of the Jumper's cloaking device, claiming that it had been damaged by the shots from the Wraith beacon in orbit. Scar had shown a flicker of concern when Sheppard mentioned that the marker satellite was now nothing more than space dust, but the alien hadn't let it change his plans. On his orders, they were still flying northwards, describing a course that took them toward the site of the Ancient dolmen. John kept the throttle set at the middle detent, trying to lengthen the time of the flight while he worked out a plan of action.

So far, so bad, he told himself. Sheppard gave Scar a sideways glance. Something about a Wraith sitting there as comfortable as anything inside an Ancient ship was just… Well, wrong. It lay badly with the colonel on a bone-deep, instinctual level, and he wondered if there wasn't something in the ATA gene he carried, the genetic connection to the Ancient bloodline, that made him dislike being in such close proximity to a Wraith. For his part, Scar seemed quite unruffled by the whole experience. If anything, he was fascinated by the soft glow of the Jumper's control console, studying it closely like a human would scrutinize a bug under a magnifying glass.