At least its shields were down. He hadn’t even had time to think about that yet, except as an immediate tactical problem, but he was aware that the bigger problem was looming. The main advantage they had over the Wraith was that ships equipped with Asgard or Ancient shield generators could take more punishment than the fragile hives. If they’d lost that advantage…
Two more Darts streaked into view, arrowing straight toward the viewscreen, apparently on a kamikaze run for the bridge.
“I’ve got them,” Marks said. Meyers’ hands were moving swiftly over her console, playing with the maneuvering thrusters to get them a slightly better angle. Caldwell’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair, but he resisted the urge to backseat drive.
“Fire at will,” Caldwell said, and Marks waited another endless few seconds, then fired, two bursts from the forward rail guns that splintered both Darts well clear of the Daedalus’s hull.
“Forward shields at seventy-five percent,” Marks reported. “Rear shields back up at twenty-five percent.”
“We’re in better shape than they are,” Caldwell said. He hated to leave himself even more of a sitting duck, but the Hammond was clearly having trouble extricating herself from her standoff with the hive ship. “Blue Leader, Hammond could use some help.”
“Copy that, Daedalus,” Hocken said crisply, and then, startled, “Daedalus, I have multiple Wraith Darts breaking away in formation.”
“Confirmed,” Meyers said.
Either they were pulling back to support the hive ship, or, worse, planning to make an exploratory run on Atlantis. The first would be bad news; the second, a disaster.
“We’re in pursuit,” Hocken said.
“Copy that, Blue Leader,” Caldwell said, wishing grimly there were anything he could do besides sit and wait.
Chapter twenty-seven
Over Atlantis
John stretched out in the control chair, feeling it come alive under him as he leaned back, lighting up and warming up under his hands. As always, it felt easy to sink into its enhanced perceptions, the world lighting up around him, showing him the airspace around Atlantis, the bright spots of jumpers launching and then dimming as they cloaked. There was more information there when he thought about it, wind speed and direction as much a feeling as a visual display, the wider sweep of the solar system sharpening as he reached for a broader view.
Some part of him was restless, though, thinking of too many other places he needed to be. He itched to be up in the control room, to know where all the security teams were and what they were doing. The chair responded, obligingly building him a map of the city with life signs readings included, and John willed it firmly out of existence. It wouldn’t tell him anything he wanted to know.
Lorne was up in the control room, coordinating the security teams, checking in with Teyla to make sure she was ready to alert them if she sensed Wraith in the city. Lorne wasn’t up in a jumper because he had to be in the control room. John wasn’t either place because he had to be in the chair. He took a deep breath and let it out, willing himself to let it go.
He relaxed deeper into the interface, the view from the long-range sensors coming up for him as he thought about it, easy and clear. The Wraith cruiser was drifting, clearly disabled. Hammond was engaged with the hive ship, and while they were too far out for the sensors to pick up individual Darts or 302s, the energy signature surrounding the two ships suggested a melee in progress.
Daedalus wasn’t coming up to support Hammond, clearly damaged. Still, they were holding the hive ship off. There was no way it was in close enough to be able to tell that Atlantis’s shields were down. Two battlecruisers on one hive ship wasn’t bad odds, even with one of them stationary. He wished he could see what the Darts and 302s were doing, and met the soft resistance of the interface when he asked for something beyond its capabilities, which he always imagined as apologetic.
That’s okay, he told it. We’ll just sit tight.
Something was changing, though, something subtly shifting in the pattern of the fight, and then the display lit up with the first warning of incoming Darts, still well out from the planet but heading for it fast. He heard the crackle of his radio activating as if it came from a long way away, the words seeming painfully slow.
“Sir, Daedalus reports Darts breaking off and heading for the city,” Lorne said. “302s are in pursuit.”
“I see them,” John said. “Tell the jumper pilots to stay out of the way. Fire drones if necessary, but do not engage at close quarters.”
“Yes, sir,” Lorne said. The jumpers were well-matched with Darts in the hands of an experienced combat pilot, but they had too few of those right now. Pilots unused to tactical speeds flying invisible ships sounded like a recipe for somebody crashing into one of their own 302s.
John could have done it. He’d played tag with Darts in a jumper plenty of times before, keeping them off Atlantis while dodging between towers at top speed. He’d never tried it in a 302, but there was some part of him that wished he was out there in one, tearing toward the city fast enough that even with the inertial dampeners the acceleration pressed him into his seat, thinking about nothing but finding his targets and sticking to them until he could blow them out of the sky —
He could feel the weapons system responding, readying drones. Not yet, he told it, or told himself, whichever was the best way of thinking about it. He couldn’t afford to waste power until he was sure he needed it. He had to let this play out a little while longer. They were approaching the atmosphere, the 302s not quite matching the Darts’ speed but harassing them whenever they came into range, trying to force them into evasive maneuvers that would cut their speed.
One of the city’s built-in subroutines informed him in a flicker of images and Ancient, in which John had by now developed a useful vocabulary of phrases like ‘WARNING: CRITICAL FAILURE’, that the city’s shields should now be raised in response to incoming enemy craft, but that current power levels were insufficient to sustain shields for more than twelve seconds at maximum strength.
So let’s not. They might need those twelve seconds, but they didn’t need them yet.
The 302s were still harrying the Darts as they hit the atmosphere and began pulling up, leveling off to make a run on the city. One of them wasn’t slowing its descent, though, on course for the city at suicidal speeds.
If it pulled out of the dive and shed speed at the last minute before it hit, it might only take out the central tower. If it hit them like a missile from orbit —
The 302s weren’t going to be fast enough either way. John launched a single drone, sailing it up along the projected path of the Dart, guiding it until the drone acquired the target on its own. It slammed itself into the Dart like a magnet, the Dart blossoming into fire as it hit. Some of the debris could still strike the city, and he thought about raising the shield, but — Twelve seconds.
He forced himself to wait as the rest of the Darts dove on Atlantis, with the 302s streaking in behind them.
Mel swore as the HUD flashed red and orange, jammed her throttle all the way open. They were too slow, only three of them anyway, Blue Four still tangled with the Darts around the Daedalus, but they were what Atlantis had. She cursed again, seeing one dive toward the city, flung her 302 into a turn to pursue, but another Dart’s energy beam flashed past her wing, slammed against her aft shields. She dove away, spinning, saw Blue Two slide past her, weapons blazing, pressed her own firing stud as another Dart slid through the crosshairs. It wasn’t a clean hit, but the Dart went spinning, pilot or systems unable to compensate. She flipped the 302 up and over, turning back toward Atlantis, but a drone flickered on her HUD, and the diving Dart vanished in a cloud of flame.