Something caught Sheppard’s eye and he nodded. “Yeah, you two go on ahead. I see someone I know. I’ll catch up.”
Rodney watched him walk off across the deck. “What kind of security check?”
“The Asgard database is of highly critical strategic value,” said East. “Obviously we don’t just let anyone have access to it. The check’s a formality, no big deal.” He shot McKay a quick look. “Unless you have a thing about needles.”
“Staff!” He called out and a soldier in British-issue BDU camos turned to face him. “Staff Sergeant Mason, how the hell are you?”
The SAS trooper snapped off a salute. “Colonel Sheppard, sir. I’m as well as can be expected. How are things on Atlantis?”
“Same old, same old. Wraith. Replicators. The usual mayhem.”
Mason accepted this with a nod. “I heard you moved the city.”
Sheppard shrugged. “It’s a long story. But the fishing is much better in the new place.”
“Sorry to hear about Weir and Beckett.”
“Yeah.” He frowned and nodded, then gestured at the ship around them. “I see the IOA still has you Brits knee deep in the Stargate program, though.”
“Just doing our bit, boss,” he replied. “It’s a long way from what happened on Halcyon.”
“Yeah,” agreed the colonel. Mason and his squad had been part of a military exchange program posted to Atlantis almost two years ago, and during an off-world mission on a planet riven by endless wars, Sheppard had found the stony-faced spec-ops sergeant to be a dedicated and steadfast soldier. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve been on the Oddie for a couple of weeks, along with some Spetsnaz lads. We’re going in with the first wave of Jaffa to do some recon-in-force.” He lowered his voice. “We’re the only ones getting our hands dirty, though. To be honest, sir, the IOA has pressured Stargate Command to keep this ship well out of the firing line. If they had their way, it’d be permanently parked out at Area 51.”
“The Asgard Core,” said Sheppard. “It’s too valuable to chance it being destroyed.”
Mason nodded. “’Course, that means the Free Jaffa think we’re all yellow. But me and the Ivans and a squad of SG-13’s Jarheads are going to change some minds.”
“Just watch your six around that Baal creep. Don’t let the smooth accent fool you, he’s tricky.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Good luck, sir.” The soldier saluted again, palm out, thumb down.
Sheppard did the same. “You too, Staff.”
McKay rubbed the sore spot on his arm were the corpsman had taken the blood sample, and glared at him. “Got enough?” he said pointedly.
“We can’t be too careful,” said East, who stood with an armed security trooper at the entrance to the compartment housing the Asgard database. “Our enemies have played some pretty smart tricks on us in the past. The Goa’uld, the Replicators, the Ori, they’ve all used duplicates and spies at one time.”
“Do I look like a Prior?” McKay retorted. “I mean, really. I have much better skin tone.”
The medical corpsman’s analysis unit gave a chime. “He’s clean. It all matches up, blood, retina, voice print, the works.”
Rodney clapped his hands together. “Great. Now we’ve established that I’m not a Cylon, can I please get to work?”
East nodded to the security guard, who opened the hatch. “Knock yourself out, Doctor. Just remember —”
“48 hours, right.”
McKay’s first thought on seeing the Asgard Core was of a church organ; the device resembled most of the consoles on Fenrir’s ship, but it was larger, and forged from a strange hybrid of human and alien technologies. Multiple holographic screens danced in the air, projected from hidden emitter nodes in the complex metallic-crystalline matrix of the device.
His mouth went dry. Inside this machine lay the assembled secrets of a species that had been venturing across intergalactic space when mankind was still in the bronze age, a universe of knowledge belonging to a race that had shackled stars to their command, bent and twisted the laws of mathematics, quantum physics and biology… It was staggering to think of it.
For a moment, a flash of childhood memory replayed in his mind’s eye; the day when he had taken his father’s hand and followed him into the local public library for the very first time. The towering stacks of books reaching away from him, seeming to go on forever. Knowledge, there for the taking.
He blinked away the reverie. As much fun as it would be to dive into the depths of the core and find the answers to problems like the Collatz conjecture or the framework for a Grand Unified Theory, Rodney wasn’t here to sightsee. He had a job to do, a target to locate.
McKay took a seat at the central console, the holographic screens orienting themselves obediently to him. “Open search engine,” he told it, cracking his fingers. “Search parameters are as follows; tell me everything there is to know about the Asgard known as Fenrir.”
Three words immediately appeared on all the screens. NO DATA FOUND.
He grinned. “You’re just not looking hard enough.” He leaned forward and began to work the keyboard in front of him.
There were just three of them left now, the other two nothing more than papery skin over jutting, angular bones.
One of the others bent over the last they had fed upon, placing his hand upon its sunken chest; but the feeding maw in his palm gained no purchase. There was no more life left to take.
With hard eyes, feral and hungry, the Wraith turned to face the others it shared a cell with. One was another functionary drone, but the other was the warrior. The warrior had made the decisions as to which of them would be sacrificed, as was the right of one so ranked in the clan. But now the choice of who would be fed upon next had narrowed too far. This time the Wraith drone would not accept its fate.
The warrior cocked his head, sensing the thoughts of its kindred. His lips drew back in a low snarl, daring the other Wraith to defy him, to attack.
And if he did, then what would happen? The thin veneer of control that had kept them barely sane, living out weeks and months since the alien had dragged them from the wreckage of their cruiser, that would break. It would shatter like glass and they would fall upon one another, fighting and feeding in frenzy until only one was left.
The low-ranked Wraith hesitated. No matter what happened, death was the only end point. He would either perish now at the hands of his own kind, eke out a slow and painful ending as a food source for his kindred, or — perhaps by some miracle — win out and survive to eventually die alone and starving.
Aching muscles coiled in his legs and his hands contracted into claws. So be it then; death now or death later. There was no point in waiting —
“Wait,” said the warrior, a twitch on his face. “Wait. Listen.”
At first he thought it was some sort of ploy, a distraction the warrior would use to blindside him and then drain him dry; but then he heard.
Not through the meat and bones of the audial pits on his cheeks and skull, but through the haze of his thoughts. Distant, like the sense of an electrical storm far beyond the horizon, close like the acidic stink of his own stale body fluids. He caught the eyes of the other Wraith in the cell with him and they all shared a nod of new, unshakable purpose.
It was a voice, echoing and approaching. A sweet, sweet voice dripping with promise and the raw pleasure of a feeding as yet untasted. A psychic bell tolling, the call of his clan Queen.
A single word, brimming with emotion and assurance.
Soon.
Teyla Emmagan stumbled to a halt in the corridor and put out a hand to steady herself, pressing the other to her head.
For a moment…
It was a spike of pain that lanced through her, harsh and brutal; but as quickly as it had arisen, it was gone, faded away as if it had never occurred.