A whole disbelieving whirl of thoughts raced through Ronon's mind and all at once crystallized into realization. Marcon was compromised. He would be the first to die once the STs caught up, and he knew it.
"Good idea," Ronon whispered. "But mine's better."
He rammed a flat palm into Marcon's chest, his rage fueling the force of the punch. The chairman of the Lantean Security Council toppled backward and tumbled down the stairs in an uncontrollable fall. Ronon wished he could have seen it, but hearing the screams wasn't bad.
"What was that?" murmured Teyla.
"He must have slipped."
"Clumsy. Sounds like he's keeping our friends busy, though."
"Yeah."
Broken-necked or still alive, Marcon would, at the very least, block the stairs for a while.
Another minute bought. Ronon tried the wrist control again. This time the steel barrier obligingly did what the wall in the lab had done and dissolved, revealing a vast room. Squinting against a sudden onslaught of brightness, muted and erratic as it was, he blew out a soft sigh of relief.
"We're good to go?" Teyla asked softly.
She'd barely finished speaking when an explosion rocked the building and all but deafened him. Then, after a heartbeat of utter silence and through the ringing in his ears, Ronon heard muffled screams riding on the back of the detonation. The area immediately in front of him was filled with swirling smoke and dust, and he now recognized the significance of that warm, unsteady light that penetrated the gloom: fire. Without another word, he yanked Teyla through the opening, and sealed it behind them.
"Where are we?" Then she must have smelled it. A flicker of panic danced across her face. "Fire," she hissed.
"Yes."
Gradually the haze of dust and smoke left behind by the detonation rose, carried upward by hot air and dissipating, probably through some vent in the ceiling. The room drifted into focus like a stretch of landscape emerging from a bank of fog. It was devastated. Debris littered the floor; pieces of metal, charred and so grotesquely twisted that they offered no clue as to what had been destroyed, chunks of machinery ripped from their fastenings and shattered like toys-and bodies. Most casualties seemed to be civilian, poor bastards living in the slums, pressed into labor here for a wage that barely allowed them to feed their families.
Suddenly a shrill, drawn-out whistle ripped through the air and resolved in a new detonation that shook the ground and nearly knocked him off his feet. Stunned, he realized that the first blast he'd heard couldn't possibly have been the one that had destroyed this facility-if it had been, he and Teyla would be part of the carnage now. Multiple explosions, three at least. It seemed the government district was under attack, either from the homegrown resistance, consolidated at last, or from those outside hostiles the Ancestors had styled into a bugbear.
Either way, the timing was a gift. The STs would have better things to do than chase a couple of fugitives, and he and Teyla could simply disappear in the general mayhem.
"Let's go." He turned to Teyla, started to see her pale as death, sightless eyes fixed on some vision of horror that had to be at least as bad as this. "Teyla! You okay?"
"The Cataclysm," she breathed. "It's come again. Pima was right."
The what? And who was Pima?
Fascinating though the answer might be, they didn't have time for this. He clutched her shoulders, shook her. "Teyla, snap out of it! It's just an attack. You've seen dozens of them. We've got to make the best of the confusion, steal a ship, and get away."
She didn't seem to hear him. "That noise. The whistling… In my timeline Charybdis practically destroyed the Pegasus galaxy. Planets were torn from their orbit, stars turned to supernovas, moons fell into their primaries. Almost everywhere it began with devastating meteor showers… it was like living in a war zone…"
"Teyla, I'm sure-"
"I'm telling you, I know that noise! This place has been destroyed, yes?"
"Yes."
"Look up! What do you see?"
Ronon gazed up, if only because he figured it that humoring her was the quickest way to stop this nonsense. Above him the air had cleared, leaving a plain view of the hall's rafters. What he'd presumed to be a vent drawing off smoke was in fact a massive hole in the ceiling, its edges still smoldering. No missile could have done this.
"Perhaps you're right. It doesn't matter."
Not waiting for her reply, he picked her up, slung her over his shoulder. Between the meteors and the STs coming up the stairs, they didn't have a second to lose. Teyla having to navigate the debris would slow them down too much. From outside screams and wailing and the screech of sirens seeped into the hangar. Inside the only sounds were Ronon's footfalls and labored breathing, the occasional clatter when he trod loose a bit of debris, and the rustle of cooling embers. As far as possible he kept to wherever the floor was clear of rubble, racing a zigzag obstacle course for the doors he'd spotted at the far end of the hall.
He was less than five yards out, when he heard shouting behind him. The STs had arrived. The next moment, an energy blast missed him narrowly and slammed into the wall, tearing out chunks of mortar and masonry. No quaint man-to-man weaponry for the STs; their job was to kill efficiently and at a distance. But even they weren't immune to the carnage. After that first blast there was the briefest of ceasefires while the STs struggled with their surprise and shock. Ronon used the respite to fling himself and Teyla across those last few yards, through the door, and out into a huge loading yard.
The sky was ablaze, glowing in a deep, vicious red, offset by low clouds that loomed black where they didn't suddenly bloom with brightness. It looked like sheet lightning until the meteors burst from the clouds, crisscrossing the air with trails of fire and smoke and hurtling toward the ground. It was beautiful, in a horrific kind of way.
Ronon tore himself away from the spectacle. By the dock along the side of the yard a dozen or so freight gliders stood lined up, never to be loaded now. Their hulls were streaked with soot and peppered with dents and small holes; several of them sat dead on the ground, their engines incapacitated. Desperate for cover, Ronon headed for the freighters. The master stevedore, goods list still in hand, lay on the dock; a couple of his men, barely alive, slumped between two gliders, moaning. Just past them, wedged in between the freighters and dwarfed by them, a small private ground glider was parked.
The sight almost made him laugh; never mind cover, they'd got themselves a getaway vehicle. The glider was hovering, which meant its anti-gray drive was still operational. The glider's owner hadn't fared quite so well. He still sat in the pilot's seat, killed by the same meteor fragment that had left a hole in the back of the glider.
Ronon lifted Teyla over the side and dumped her in the passenger seat; then he pulled the dead man from the glider and jumped into the pilot's seat. He released the parking safety, and the small vessel leaped up a few inches and sluggishly nosed forward. The drive was operational alright, but it was running less than smoothly. Then again, right now he'd settle for a mule provided it got them out of there. As if to confirm that thought, shouts and running footsteps announced that the STs had caught up and were fanning out to search for them.
"Hang on!" he said to Teyla, offered a prayer to any deity that would listen, and slammed the throttle all the way forward.
The glider's engine howled in protest, then the vehicle shot out from between the freighters and across the yard, provoking shouts of rage from the STs. A barrage of blasts followed in their wake. Before Ronon could react, the glider's forward speed all but stalled. To make up for it, the vessel shot ten feet straight up into the air. It was like riding an unbroken horse.