James Swallow: Halcyon

"Yeah, I guess you wouldn't want to appear sickly when your buddies arrive, right? They might get the pick of the cull, and that would make you look a little stupid."

"Indeed." Ice formed on the word.

"Sorry. Sorry," McKay gulped. "Sometimes I babble when I'm nervous. Like now."

Scar eyed Rodney's laptop and the crude splice into the Hive Ship's systems. "What were you doing to my vessel, prey? Answer me."

"We… Wanted to…" McKay blinked, trying to think of a convincing lie and failing miserably. "Phone home?"

The Wraith commander snarled and came at him; but in the next second a wall of sound blasted out across the chamber and knocked all of them off their feet.

The charge did its work. The petals of the iris hatchway were either blown completely away or bent back in burnt, tattered shreds. Ronon leapt into the coiling smoke instants after the blast occurred, hurling the flash-bangs through the ruined doorway.

Inside, Rodney saw the familiar black cylinders arc through the hazy air and clatter across the deck. He spun away and covered his face with his arms just as the stun grenades blew. Brilliant magnesium-white flashes of light strobed inside the nexus chamber, throwing stark, sharp-edged shadows across the walls.

Ronon came in first, red bolts of energy issuing from the barrel of his gun. Sheppard took the right, laying down bursts of machinegun fire, and Teyla moved left, firing the steam-rifle from the hip in blaring chugs of discharge.

The ex-Hounds at Scar's sides were downed by the first broadside of shots, but the rest of the aliens reacted faster than the Atlantis team expected, shooting back with stunner rifles and blasters liberated from the Hive Ship's weapons pods. The flash-bangs had done the trick, however, and all the human sur vivors were flat to the floor or behind cover as the firefight raged across the control deck.

All except Rodney McKay, pressed up against a bone pillar that was barely wide enough to hide him. He glimpsed Scar, a blaster pistol in each hand, fanning stunner bolts back and forth, trying to catch the Atlantis team with a glancing hit. His mind raced. John and the others were turning the tide, but if that was another Wraith ship inbound, it wouldn't matter if they did win the day here. He could make out the sensor console from where he crouched; the mystery contact was coming closer, on a direct intercept course.

And if he could complete the reactor overload sequence Kelfer had started, by the time the other Hive Ship knew what was happening, it would be too late. The blast would engulf the other vessel. Two birds with one big thermonuclear stone.

But something seemed wrong, out of place. The silhouette of the new contact didn't move like a Wraith craft. Back on Atlantis, Rodney had pored over hours of sensor log footage of Hive Ships in the aftermath of the siege, hoping to find something of use if they ever came back. He knew how the Wraith slipped through space, and this craft wasn't doing that. It was coming in hard and fast, clearly primed for battle. The shape was all wrong, too, blocky and angular. It almost looked like the-

"Daedalus?" McKay's face split in a manic grin. "It's the Daedalus! Ha! We're saved! Weir sent them to get us!" But as fast as the bolt of euphoria raced through him, it vanished. No, we are not saved. The sensor return from the SGC Deep Space Carrier didn't show a ship about to mount a boarding operation or a rescue; Daedalus was on an attack vector, her rail guns running hot. To Colonel Caldwell and his crew, what they saw on their scopes was a Hive Ship preparing to annihilate a slew of defenseless ground targets. They'd have no idea that the Atlantis team were on board. Daedalus was looking at a clear and present threat to the planet Halcyon; and McKay knew Steven Caldwell enough to know that he wouldn't hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.

"Sheppard! Anyone!" He shouted. "Warn them off! Tell Caldwell to hold his fire!" But the din inside the nexus chamber flattened his every word, the crash of gunfire blotting them out.

Then Rodney saw the radio where Daus had dropped it, sitting there in the middle of the deck as bullets and energy bolts criss-crossed in the air around it

It was mayhem in here. John moved from cover to cover, taking advantage of consoles or pillars where he could, squeezing off three-round bursts at anything that looked Wraith. He heard the thunder of a long-lance and the sound brought the madness of the bound battle back to his thoughts, the sudden recollection of the scream of shot and the blurry frenzy of one long firefight. This was worse, as if someone had taken that skirmish and rolled it up, stuffed in a can and shook it. Enemy fire was coming from everywhere and the colonel's mind screamed at him to just react, to protect himself; the primitive fight or flight reflex warred with the trained, expert solider part of his brain, the part that pushed him on, forward, that stopped him from being pinned down.

Teyla made an angry noise at the Halcyon steam-rifle in her hands, the breech hissing open as the last cluster of needle-shot fed from the ammunition hopper. Hot vapor and droplets of condensation coiled from the muzzle, and without hesitation she turned the long gun into a club, striking a Wraith attacker across the head with it. The barrel broke, but the alien fell and did not rise again. The woman swung low and scooped up a discarded swordgun and brought it back up in a battle stance.

Sheppard wasn't worried. Teyla Emmagan could have taken on a dozen Wraiths with just a butter knife and he still would have put his money on the Athosian; and today she had a fury in her eyes that he had only seen on rare occasions. Scar's abuse of her with that damned collar had brought Teyla's darkest anger to the surface.

The chamber was filling with a haze of acrid chemical smoke, flames licking from places where missed shots had shattered Wraith screens or caught banks of combustible Halcyon technology alight. There was a moment when John was sure he heard a voice crying out over the noise of gunfire — McKay, maybe? — but then a couple more ex-Hounds came snarling over the tops of the control panels at him, and Sheppard found himself side by side with Ronon, fighting to stay alive for another minute longer.

Each time Rodney dared to think about leaving his cover, energy bolts rained past him or Wraith in battle frenzy screeched by. I'm so close! He could almost reach out and touch the radio, just a few feet more, maybe.

"So near and yet so far," murmured Daus, cradling his bloody face in one palm. The Magnate sat slumped against a panel, watching McKay with his remaining good eye. "It will not save you." He shuddered through the words, morose and pained. "The truth only wounds."

"I have to get to the radio!" Rodney blurted. "No one has to die! If I can get to it, no one has to die, you understand?"

A shadow passed over Daus's face, and he dropped his hand, letting McKay see the ruin of his blinded eye. "No one has to die," he repeated, traces of the ruler's former iron will surging in his voice. "You are wrong." The Magnate propelled himself up from the deck with a hard shove and heaved his bulk across the chamber, falling through the crossfire toward Scar. The Wraith reacted a heartbeat too slowly and the two of them collided, spinning around in a vicious dance.

On all fours, Rodney scuttled out from behind the bone pillar and snatched up the military radio, his heart in his mouth as he dove back before the moment of misdirection was lost.

Daus's blood-slick hands clamped tight around the Wraith commander's throat and he pressed every last ounce of his weight into the alien. "This hunt ends here," he snarled, "for my world and my daughter!"

Scar choked and wheezed, his eye bulging as the Magnate strangled the air from him. His pistols lost, the Wraith flailed at the man's torso, ripping the elegant silks of his jacket to ribbons, slashing into the meat of his broad chest. Scar spat curses in his own language, fighting against the Halcyonite's strength.