James Swallow - Halcyon

Still, for all his apparent distraction, the Wraith never once slackened his grip on the controller box attached to Teyla's steel leash. The Athosian woman sat behind Scar, her shoulders hunched forward and her hands supporting the metal collar at her neck. Sheppard chewed down a surge of anger at the sight of his friend's mistreatment. For a moment, Teyla caught his eye and she forced a weak nod. Hang in there, he thought, I'll get you out of this.

And yet he hadn't been able to save Ronon. The Satedan was back down there, miles away now in the forest clearing, maybe dead, maybe alive. Of all the men he had ever met, John Sheppard had never known any person to have a survival instinct as strong as Ronon Dex did, and he just hoped that he could get through this and go back for the brusque ex-soldier. But with each passing second they were getting further and further away from Ronon, not to mention Beckett and the others; and as for McKay… This whole mission was coming to pieces around his ears, and here was John, forced to play dial-a-ride for a Wraith raiding party.

Scar snapped out a guttural yowl at the other Wraiths in the back compartment of the Jumper. They were skittish and nervous, hissing and clawing at one another like cats in a cage two sizes too small. Scar's growls quieted them down for the moment, and he noticed Sheppard watching him.

"They obey me," he noted. "Despite all the ill-effects of the device, they still have enough intelligence to know that."

"Uh-huh," John pretended to be indifferent. "So how come you can chew gum and walk at the same time, but not them? Why aren't you doing the monkey?"

"Your idiom is peculiar." Scar sniffed. "I am a simply superior. My cadre is of a more intellectual vein than the common Wraith."

A humorless smile crossed Teyla's face. "You sound like Daus and the other nobles. The hunters. They also like to think they are superior."

"In my case, it is truth and not self-delusion."

Sheppard shrugged. "If you say so."

He turned the Jumper to avoid the peak of a snow-capped mountain and in the distance he saw a white patch among the foothills. The dolmen was just visible as a slate gray dot sitting on a broad arena of bare stone. Almost the instant the ship turned to face the distant obelisk, the feral Wraith in the rear compartment began to whine. The colonel saw Scar flinch. His hand crept toward a control on the console. Perhaps he could pull the same gag he had with the hitchhiker, dropping the hatch and turning off the gravity dampeners -

"Do not be foolish," Scar's voice was low and loaded with menace. He had Teyla's pistol in his hand. "We have come this far without incident. I would prefer not to kill you while we are still airborne."

"Just stretching my fingers," he lied.

The closer they approached, the more it was clear that the dolmen was causing the Wraith-Scar included-physical pain. Sheppard shot Teyla a look that said be ready, and she nodded back.

"I would think you would not wish to approach the dolmen," the woman began, "does it not hurt you to be so close to it?"

"The agony is intense." Scar bit out the words through gritted teeth. "But now the machine runs weak. After ten thousand years, we can tolerate it this much." He jerked Teyla's leash and the woman grabbed at her collar. "I know you will attempt to defy me at this moment, as you think I am distracted." He worked the controller and the collar contracted a little. "You are mistaken. Obey me, human."

The Jumper's on-board computer had recognized the dolmen as a piece of kindred Ancient technology and brought up a scan of the monument. Sheppard saw a cutaway of the interior. It was a maze of molecule-thin antennae broadcasting disruptive energy patterns on the Wraith's psychic wavelength.

"Destroy it," growled Scar. "Now."

"What? No way!" retorted the colonel. "That thing's got a ZPM powering its core. The detonation of something like that would blow the planet apart!"

"Wrong," spat the Wraith. He extended a finger and pointed to a section of the dolmen. "Target your weapons drones here. It will collapse the construct and discharge the energy safely."

"How can… You be sure?" gasped Teyla.

Scar grinned cruelly. "I have killed more of the Enemy than I can count. Destroyed hundreds of… Of their craft. I know how to defeat them!" He tightened the collar another notch on Teyla's neck. "Do it now!"

The sensing mechanisms in the pilot's chair had already read Sheppard's train of thought and warmed a pair of drones for launch. The targeting cues on the head-up display framed the hit location on the dolmen, locking the weapons on. Every fiber in his being told him that this was not what he wanted to do, that this would be the absolute worst choice he could make; but there on the floor of the Puddle Jumper was Teyla Emmagan, dying by inches and gasping for one more breath of air. And John could not let her die.

"Firing," he grated, the word catching hard in his throat. Sheppard did not even need to touch a control. The two drones ejected from the Jumper's outrigger pods and spun away in brilliant corkscrews of yellow lightning. John brought the ship around hard, veering away at full throttle, making for the upper atmosphere. If the Wraith was wrong, they could quickly find themselves on the edge of a planet-sized fireball.

The watchful canopy display tracked the drones on their unerring course straight into the timeless gray stone of the obelisk. The matter-energy conversion matrix inside the complex Ancient missiles ignited and shattered the dolmen at the precise point Scar had indicated. Sheppard had been correct; a poorly aimed shot might have ruptured the contained bubble of spacetime inside the crystalline Zero Point Module, allowing exotic particles of a kind never seen in this universe to shatter and release an apocalyptic storm of energy. Scar, however, had not lied. The impact point of the drones flattened a monument that had stood untouched for a hundred centuries, and the broadcast array collapsed in on itself. In a single, star-bright flash of power, the ZPM discharged the last of its potency into the sky. Even though the module was nearly drained, the force of the release sent lances of static discharge racing around the planet, warping tidal forces and whipping tornadoes and storms into instant fury. People in the cities and in the High Palace unlucky enough to be looking in its direction were blinded by the glare. A plume of glittering light punched out into space, and then dissipated.

On the ground, the dolmen and everything around it for a twenty mile radius was a pale wasteland of burnt soil. Airships and gyro-flyers too close to the shockwave were ripped apart or blown from the sky. In some regions, tall towers and tenement buildings were felled by earth tremors. Birds died in mid-air and fell to earth in flocks. Fallout made of burnt ash swirled into gray cloud masses. There were thunderstorms and hurricanes the like of which had never been seen on Halcyon before.

But all these consequences were forgotten as the pervasive energy of the dolmen ceased across the planet. Freed of the maddening mental interference of the Ancient device, every corralled Wraith, every Hound in every pen and street on Halcyon was released from psychic bondage. Some died from the shock, others as their kindred turned upon them; but all were wild with frenzy, their minds reduced to uncontrolled, brutal, animalistic madness.

The shockwave of charged air that radiated from the energy plume hit the Puddle Jumper's aft and flipped it end over end. Sheppard's controls refused to answer as he worked the steering yoke. The ground below raced past the cockpit canopy to be replaced by the azure sky, then repeated, green and blue, green and blue.

He was aware of Scar and Teyla there beside him, of the monstrous snarling cries coming from the other Wraith; but these were things he had to tune out of his mind, concentrating hard on the play of atmosphere across the blunt hull of the ship and the stuttering pulses of thrust from the gravity drives.