Teyla shook her head. “No, Colonel, I think there is another way.”
Carter blinked in surprise. “I’m open to any ideas, but make it quick.”
“Fenrir’s auxiliary ships, the triangular craft he used to seek out and capture the abductees from Heruun. There may still be some on the hangar level. I believe the craft possess a short-range version of the —”
“Asgard transporter!” Sam’s eyes flashed with sudden understanding. “But the hangar is two decks down from here.” Her face clouded as she glared at her console. “And if I leave this —”
“I was not suggesting you accompany me,” Teyla said, stooping to gather up a fallen weapon from the deck. “I will go alone. If I am successful, then I will transport you away. If not…” She sighed. “It will matter little.” The Athosian gestured around the wrecked command deck. “I can do nothing else to help you here, Colonel. Let me do this.”
Sam saw the determination in her and nodded. “Okay, go. But I’m not having you do it by yourself. I’ll get you some help.”
“She is beyond insane!” shouted McKay, pushing himself off the deck from where he had landed.
The impact of the collision had sent all of them to the floor, even though they had been ready for it. Sheppard dusted himself down and recovered his rifle and a pair of Wraith stunners, nodding slightly. He had to admit, Rodney had a point. Ramming ships… Hadn’t that kinda thing gone out of fashion along with Viking longboats?
“Whatever you think of Carter,” ventured Lorne, “she’s gutsy.”
“I want my guts to remain where they are, inside here!” McKay ranted, patting his belly. “Just because this ship looks like a mallet, you don’t have to use it like one!”
“My grandfather used to say, ‘if all you got is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail’,” said Sheppard. “Never really got what he meant by that until just now.” He blinked and massaged a crick in his neck.
“Colonel Sheppard, do you read?” Carter’s voice crackled through the air.
Lorne found the radio where it had fallen and tossed it to his commander. “I read you,” Sheppard said wearily. “We’re all still in one piece down here.”
“Speak for yourself!” snapped McKay, lurching toward one of the active computer consoles.
“John,” came the reply, and Sheppard knew things were at their most serious. Carter didn’t often call him by his first name, and the fact that she did it now meant that she wanted his full and absolute attention. “Teyla’s on her way to the hangar bay on tier three, that’s a deck above you. There are Wraith swarming the ship through the hull breaches. Rendezvous with her and see if you can find a working shuttle.”
“Got it.” Sheppard’s thoughts raced. Those freaky UFOs that had dragged the Puddle Jumper from the lunar surface… If one was still working, it could be their ticket off this tub. “Lorne, McKay! Gear up. We’re moving out.”
“No,” said Rodney, in a low, serious voice. He didn’t look up from his panel. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“What?” Lorne blinked. “Uh, doc? Hello? Escape route?”
McKay snatched the radio from Sheppard and spoke quickly into it. “Sam. I’m at the secondary drive monitor down here. I can see the hyperdrive program… It’s not initiating.”
Carter sighed. “Confirm that. I’m trying to re-program it on the go from here.”
The scientist shook his head. “That’s not going to work. Too many variables. With all the damage its taken, without an Asgard to program the transition, that’s never going to work. The wave-form won’t coalesce…” He stopped and shot Sheppard a look. “I can help. If we do it together, Sam up on the bridge and me down here, in tandem we might be able to get the drive to accept the activation program.”
“Rodney…”
A crooked, terrified smile crossed the other man’s face. “Hey, look, I told you you’d need my help sooner or later. You’re not as smart as you think, Carter.”
“You sure about this?” said Sheppard. “We… We may not be able to come back for you.”
McKay looked away and made a dismissive gesture. “Go away. Let me do my thing and you do yours.”
The colonel threw Lorne a nod and the two men raced toward the chamber doorway and the corridor beyond.
Rodney called out as the hatch opened. “And you better be kidding about the ‘not coming back’ part!”
Chapter Sixteen
The hangar bay was a wide space with a low ceiling, supported by the same curved stanchions of steel that ribbed the corridors throughout the interior of the Asgard ship. The interior illumination was poor, most of the glow strips set in the corners of the deck dead or dying. Colonel Carter’s surprise attack upon the Wraith hive had put the interior of the Aegis into disarray; gantries and pieces of the roof were toppled and lay in shattered piles. There were perhaps a dozen of the strange, manta-shaped Asgard shuttlecraft scattered about the chamber, most of them damaged where they had shifted in the colossal impact. Teyla saw one of them flipped over against another, the glowing coils of its drive matrix blinking and fading.
The air inside the hangar was acrid with the smell of burned plastic, and cold. Life support functions on this tier were failing, and she could see the first rimes of hoarfrost forming in white patches across the decking, the puffs of vapor from her breaths. Beneath her boots, the metal flooring creaked and vibrated.
To the far side she spotted a craft that appeared intact, the dim glow beneath it illuminating the area around it in a pool of radiant light. The sight of it gave her pause, and Teyla felt her adrenaline spike; it was a moment of primal fear-reaction, recalling the terror she had felt when the Asgard’s gene-drones had captured her on Heruun. For an instant she remembered the horrible sensation of paralysis as the rays from the orb device engulfed her, her own body resisting her as the aliens gathered her up and took her away. She shuddered and forced the recollection away.
The memory had distracted her; even as she realized it, the attack came.
A giant humanoid shape threw itself from the shadows of an overhead support frame, and Teyla spun away, hearing the rush of air as it fell toward her. She was quick enough to avoid being flattened by the enraged Risar, but not quite enough to get out of its reach. It cuffed her as she turned to aim a stunner, and the impact made her howl with pain. The Wraith pistol flew from her grip and was lost in the shadows beneath another of the saucer-ships.
Landing with a heavy thud, the Asgard clone-creature went for her with its spindly, taloned fingers raised in claws. It was mumbling incoherently, staggering even as it advanced. Teyla saw it was wounded and sickly, but still she did not doubt that the Risar could kill her easily enough. In sheer body mass alone it was twice her size, and beneath its pale torso, ropey muscles bunched whenever it moved.
She backed away, raising her hands in a fighting stance. Teyla searched the blank-eyed face of the Risar for any kind of recognition or intelligence and found none. With Fenrir dead, whatever advanced technology the Asgard had used to control his towering proxies was inoperative, and now the clones had been reduced to mindless automatons, savage things that knew only madness.
There was dark blood on its fingers; the mark of kills it had already made, perhaps human, perhaps Wraith or other Risar, it was impossible to know. The creature made a gurgling sound and rushed her.
“Move forward!” Ronon shouted, pushing out from behind the shade of the nearest tree trunks. Behind him, he sensed Keller moving quickly, keeping low and going from cover to cover, and past her the mixed group of Takkol’s guards and Soonir’s rebels. Lieutenant Allan was at his side, firing and moving. Her face was haggard and worn, and as they both paused for breath behind an overturned cart, she threw him a glance.