James Swallow - Halcyon

McKay watched the man and felt nothing but sadness and pity for him.

Her vision tunneled, the black shadows of the chamber encroaching on Teyla's sight, thickening, leaching the color from her world. The buzzing pain in her skull blotted out everything, all rational thought. She had sparks of memory burst before her, flaring and then gone as quick as the harvest festival fireworks on Athos. Dr. Weir had once told her how Earthers had a belief that a person's life would pass before their eyes in the moments prior to death; Teyla rebelled against the notion, trying to pull the last molecules of air into her lungs, but there was nothing but acid there now.

She saw the fields of rikka-wheat outside the village where she ran and played as a girl; a smile on the face of little Jinto as he offered her a cup of water; the rain on the day her father died; Sheppard speaking of his `Ferris Wheels'; Elizabeth's friendly smile; and more.

Teyla thought of her friends, of John and Ronon, of how she would never see them again, and that cut more deeply than anything. The tunnel closed in over her, blood-warm and enveloping -

— and brought fire and agony. New pain ripped into her neck and she choked, a fierce blow as hard as a blacksmith's hammer resonating through her bones. Teyla felt a pressure against her lips, and a rush of aches from her battered throat as air was forced down it. Her chest rose in stutters as hot breath flooded in to fill the void. She gasped and the shock that came with it made her eyes prickle with tears.

"Teyla?" She felt the words on her cheeks. "Teyla, come on! Talk to me!"

"John." It hurt to speak, but she managed it. Her eyes fluttered open and a face faded into view, a hand's span away. "John?"

"Easy," he replied, his face drawn with concern. "Take it slow. You'd stopped breathing." He gestured to the side and Teyla saw the metal collar broken open on the floor, a bullet hole in the mechanism. "Had to risk it."

Teyla touched her lips. "You gave me your breath?"

Sheppard colored a little. "Uh. Yeah. Sorry. It was for the, uh, CPR."

She picked out Ronon standing nearby, arms folded and a discontented look on his face. "Are you two going to exchange bonding vows, or are we going to move on?"

"Right." The colonel pulled her to her feet and Teyla took a moment to get her bearings. "It's blind luck we found you. Another minute more, and…"

"Thank you," she said with a nod, "both of you. Have you located Rodney?"

Sheppard nodded. "Command center. Scar's probably there already, though."

"Good," Teyla said. "I have a debt to repay him."

The ascent program was almost complete.

Bio-reactors running at optimum power, the crystal-organic components of the gravity drive swelling with energy, the Hive Ship flexed and stretched as a waking beast would shake off the last vestiges of sleep. The engineered neural matrices of the flight brain and the nerve ganglia were alight with flurries of commands, new growths of bone sprouting to cover centuries of decrepitude and inactivity. Wounds in the hull were knitting closed and healing, the gash carved by the Fourth Dynast so long ago now a pale white dash of scar tissue, the gouge cut by Ronon Dex already a dark, shiny scab.

The rush of atmosphere over the blunt hull became thinner by the second, Halcyon's grip on the Wraith vessel diminishing as the drives pressed the craft up toward orbital velocity and away from the hand of gravity. The Hive Ship's hull embraced the icy kiss of space and silence flooded over it, the rumble of air fading away to nothing. The planet that had once held it prisoner turned beneath the twitching maws of energy cannons, optic sensors opening to study the sprawl of prey-life below, calculating and planning.

The ship had returned to its natural environment, the heavy and threatening mass that seemed so wrong trapped in Halcyon's watery skies suddenly free. It became the predator it once was, a lethal arrowhead of edges and spines, ready for the hunt. For the kill. For the culling to begin anew.

As one, every monitor screen tied into the Hive Ship's internal optical sensor went blank, the views of the corridors and shadowed chambers hazing over into milky gray nothingness.

McKay saw it happen and his chest tightened. "Oh, that is not a good thing," he breathed, and his hand clutched at the empty holster on his thigh in reflex, grasping for a pistol that wasn't there.

The Lord Magnate's eyes were still distant and unfocussed, the harsh words of his daughter still echoing in his mind. Vekken flashed him a look and then grabbed Rodney by the shoulder. "The screens," he said urgently, "what is the meaning of that?"

"A Wraith who was the former commander of this ship is on board, a Wraith who knows more about how this ship operates than every person in this room." McKay shook off the man's grip. "You figure it out."

"He's going to attack."

"If we're lucky. If we're not, he'll switch off the gravity in here, or vent all the air to space or something equally nasty." Rodney thought it through. "Unless… Unless he needs access to this chamber to fully take control of the ship…"

But Vekken was already moving across the nexus chamber's atrium, calling out orders to his riflemen. "Close all the entry points to this room! Set up firing positions! Prepare for enemy incursion!"

The scientist cast around the chamber, watching Kelfer's people milling in an anxious knot. Those idiots have no idea what they're up against. Halcyon troopers were quickly falling into kneeling stances, aiming their steaming long-lance rifles at the iris doors leading out to the ship's other decks. On the upper levels he noticed more figures moving, carefully taking up positions. They were difficult to see because of the asymmetrical way the Hive Ship's bio-lumes threw chilly blue light about the walls.

"I failed her." The whisper came from Daus's lips.

"What did you say?"

"I failed… Her. Both of them." The Magnate did not look at him. He seemed smaller somehow, all of a sudden the bluster and fury gone from his body. "I wanted… Wanted strength."

"Now is not the time for a crisis of confidence," grated Rodney. He dithered over his laptop. The control protocols where still displayed there, the setting to unbalance the bio-reactor and complete the sequence Kelfer had died trying to input. He looked again into the face of the man who had killed the Halcyon scientist and could hardly believe Daus was the same person; that such a man could be broken by something as simple as the words of his daughter.

Riflemen on the main level of the nexus chamber called out their readiness to Vekken, and the adjutant acknowledged them, pausing to load the heavy pistol in his gloved hand. "Steady, men. You will hold this line in the name of the Fourth Dynast, in death or victory!"

"Death or victory!" came the chorus of replies.

Rodney grimaced at the zealous sentiment. "Please! All the gung-ho crap in the world won't keep those things out." His words died off, as it occurred to him that the men up there in the shadows on the highest levels of the chamber had not responded along with the others.

Among the scattered gear from his Atlantis kitbag was a compact flashlight and McKay snatched it up, turning the beam on the raised gantries. The halo of illumination caught a pale face hidden behind clawed hands, and behind it the yawning maw of an open vent shaft.

"They're already inside…" he gasped. "They're already inside!" The words became a shout as Scar's Wraith began their attack.

Stunner pulses rained down in bright streaks of white, knock ing riflemen from their cover by the hatches. Vekken was screaming out orders, firing blindly into the overhead walkways. His men reacted quickly, but the Wraith were already pouring down, some flinging themselves from the higher catwalks to pounce on their victims.