“Takkol!” called Sheppard. “We need to talk.”
“What is the meaning of this?” From the upper tier of the hall came a grumbling, terse voice. The senior elder came forward on bare feet, angrily knotting the belt of his nightgown around the waist. “You cannot enter this lodge without my sanction, Colonel Sheppard! It is the dead of night! What do you think you are doing?”
“Where are they?” Sheppard demanded. “What have you done with our people?”
“Your people?” Takkol frowned and rubbed his face.
“Ronon Dex and Teyla Emmagan,” said Keller.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.” Takkol made a dismissive gesture.
At the door there was a commotion and Aaren entered, still dressed in his day clothes, his expression anxious. “Elder, I heard the noise, I came as quickly as I could…”
“Where are my people?” Sheppard turned the full force of his fury on the other elder. “Teyla left the celebration early, and I sent Ronon after her. Neither of them ever arrived at Jaaya’s lodge out by the tree’s edge. Where did they go?”
“Back through the Gateway, perhaps,” offered Takkol with a snort. “If you cannot keep track of your own people, that is your concern, not ours, Colonel!”
“They wouldn’t just leave,” insisted McKay. “Not without contacting us first.”
Takkol came down a line of wooden stairs, fixing the Atlanteans with a baleful stare. “You come here in the middle of the night to accuse us of misdeeds? You, visitors to our world, those who we have shown hospitality and openness?”
“The hell you have,” Sheppard’s voice was low.
Takkol’s eyes narrowed. “I will forgive your impertinence on the understanding you leave now and let me return to my rest…”
Aaren cleared his throat. “Elder, there has been a misunderstanding here. The missing voyagers… I know where they are.”
“What?” said McKay. “Where?”
The other elder nodded to himself. “There was… A sighting this night.”
A ripple of surprise moved across the faces of all the Heruuni in the room, throwing Sheppard off a little. “A sighting of what, exactly?”
Takkol’s manner changed immediately, his annoyance turning to understanding. “Of course. I should have realized…” He paused, thinking. “But still… So soon? It is unusual.” With an off-hand wave he gestured to his guards to lower their weapons.
“A witness said they saw the Giants out at the edge of the farmsteads. Perhaps they came early because of the arrival of the voyagers?” offered Aaren.
“Hey!” Sheppard barked, irritated at being ignored. “I asked you a question. I want an answer.”
Aaren favored him with that fake smile again. “Your friends Ronon and Teyla are well, Colonel.”
Rodney’s face fell as comprehension caught up with him. “Oh no.”
Sheppard felt ice forming in the pit of his stomach even before Aaren spoke again. “They have been given a gift by the Aegis. They are among the Taken.”
“You mean… Like Errian and the others?” said Keller.
“They will not be harmed,” Takkol said lightly, turning to walk back up toward his bedchamber. “The Taken are always returned safely within a span of two weeks. You will see them again.”
“Unharmed?” snorted Sheppard. “Like those people we saw in the sick lodge?”
Takkol rounded on him and glared down at the group. “There are some, it is true, who cannot support the great burden that the Aegis gives them. We do what we can for those souls who have been too close to the light of its protection.”
“That’s it?” Rodney shook his head. “You just let your people be kidnapped for who knows whatever reason and do nothing about it?”
“We didn’t sign up for this,” said Sheppard. “Two of my team are abducted and you knew all about it. In my book, that’s an attack on all of us.”
“There is no attack!” Aaren insisted. “The Aegis protects, it does not destroy!”
“It also does not ask permission,” said Keller.
“I’m sure they went of their own free will,” Takkol added.
Sheppard shook his head. “Trust me, I’m sure they didn’t.”
“How often does this happen?” McKay walked further into the room, talking directly to the senior elder. “Every month? Every week? Have you ever even seen this Aegis you keep talking about?”
“You have no right to come here and judge us,” Takkol folded his arms. “The Aegis has kept us safe for generations. It has turned the scourge of the Wraith from our skies, it has let our planet prosper. Do you understand that, Doctor McKay? Since the coming of the Aegis, there has been no conflict on Heruun! We are united under our great protector!”
“Yeah,” snorted Sheppard. “I can see how fear of being kidnapped from your house while you sleep would make you more worried about keeping awake, than picking fights with other settlements.”
“You do not understand our ways, this is apparent. Because of that, I will overlook your rash behavior here tonight. If there is no repeat of it, you are welcome to stay until your friends are counted among the Returned. But you will not interfere here or question our society.” Takkol shot Aaren a look and in turn his guards brought up their weapons once more. The message was clear. This conversation is over.
But that wasn’t enough for John Sheppard. He took a step forward, every gun in the room tracking him. “You know something? It’s clear to me you don’t understand our ways, either. Where we come from, we don’t turn our back on our friends.” He spun on his heel and strode out of the hall, Keller and McKay following along behind.
Rodney jogged to keep up with the colonel. “Boy, is he pissed off,” he told Jennifer out the side of his mouth. “Sheppard? Sheppard!”
“Colonel!” called Keller. “What are we going to do now?”
He shot them a look. “I tell you what you’re going to do. You two are going to go back to Jaaya’s place and stay there. Radio me if anything even remotely freaky happens, got it?”
McKay’s head bobbed. “Where are you going?”
“Stargate,” came the reply. “This has just become a rescue mission.”
The three of them rounded a thick trunk, passing out of sight of the guard on the door, who watched them go as he nursed the spreading bruise on his shoulder. He worked the muscle to get a little feeling back into it, and as soon as he was certain they were gone, he found a shadowed corner and removed a small roll of message paper and an ink-stone from his robes. He listened carefully at the window of the lodge, and then, taking care to be certain he was not seen, he scribbled quick, careful sentences on a length of the tissue-thin paper.
When he was done, the guard crossed the walkway to a nondescript lodge facing to the west. He tapped on a window blind and it was opened by an elderly woman, her tanned face like old leather. She gave him a nod; they knew each other well. “Here,” he said, handing her the slip of paper. “Soonir must see this, before high sun.”
The old woman nodded once and plucked the message from his fingers.
The metallic-electric rattle of the gate chevron sequence cut right through the web of thoughts in Samantha Carter’s mind. Without even pausing to think, she was out of her chair even as Chuck’s voice called out over the tower’s intercom.
“Unscheduled off-world activation!”
She still had the datapad she’d been reading and the coffee mug she’d been sipping from as she crossed the short skybridge from her office to the control tier. Carter glanced down into the gate room below and saw the third, then fourth chevron illuminate in clusters of brilliant blue dots.
“We’re not expecting anyone back,” she began. It wasn’t a question, but she got an answer anyway.
“Not for another few hours.” Radek Zelenka was at the main screen at the back of the room.
Carter put down her burden, frowning. She’d been around to see more spontaneous gate openings than anyone else on Atlantis, and still every time it happened there was a tightening in her chest that never went away. It was like the sound of your telephone ringing at three in the morning; unexpected and alarming, with that little voice in the back of your head telling you This isn’t going to be good.