Major Sheppard’s gaze quickly took in the room. “Where are Ford and Teyla?”
Swallowing once, Dr McKay avoided the Major’s piercing look. “If the Lieutenant hadn’t been obstinate enough to ignore my warning about ill-conceived reconnaissance missions—”
“McKay! Where are they?”
When Dr McKay explained what had transpired during the evening, the Major was silent for a long moment, his expression revealing little. Although his gaze was laden with repressed grief, his only reply was, “After all that, the Wraith are still attacking?” He placed the cloth on a side table, and went to toss back the cover, but paused.
As a Chosen — this new term, Gene, did not seem fitting — Lisera was now a leader of her people, and she was curious. “The teaching windows tell us that—”
Dr McKay waved his hand dismissively. “Parables for the illiterate. The Ancient texts explained that the length of the sieges varied, depending on how many generations passed between culls.” He shared a look with Major Sheppard; a secret, perhaps, one that Lisera could not divine.
A gentle touch on her arm drew her attention to Yann. “Perhaps it would be best if you take the young ones to the top of the Station where they may find something to eat.”
The children were also beginning to crowd around the bed. Although she would have preferred to stay, Lisera sensed the Major’s unease and recalled Dr McKay’s earlier comment about clothing. She decided to accept Yann’s counsel and gestured to the young ones, guiding them out of the room. There was much still for these Chosen to do, and many things still uncertain.
Having learned the hard way once or twice that a spare uniform could come in handy, John was satisfied that his practice of stashing one in his pack had once again paid off. He leaned down to secure his not-quite-ruined leg holster and immediately reconsidered the motion as a rush of nausea sideswiped him. Whether it was from the knock on the head or the figurative sucker punch of what he’d just learned, he didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.
They were your people, under your command. Not just your friends but your responsibility as well. And this time, there was no question of maybe. McKay and Yann had seen the transport explode.
He’d be able to function, even if he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this lousy. Someone had bandaged his head and he’d fumbled through the medical pack until he found some Tylenol but he would have sold his soul for an ice pack. Even so, he recognized that he ought to be grateful for escaping asphyxiation.
Teyla and Ford… He swallowed, trying to control the churning in his stomach. He’d deal with their loss in his own way, the only way he knew. Burying grief wasn’t terribly beneficial to one’s mental health, but it would get him through the day. It always had before.
Right now, he had to concern himself with those who were still alive. Atlantis would be sending the cavalry by nightfall, and he didn’t want Markham and Stackhouse’s teams having to contend with a Wraith armada.
What the hell was driving the Wraith to mount a ground assault on a highly defensible Citadel, when they’d already culled thousands? Sure, maybe they had woken early and were a little on the hungry side, but from what he’d seen thus far in the Pegasus Galaxy, few people had the capacity to fight back. And any who did got themselves annihilated. By inflicting too many casualties on the Wraith, the Dalerans were just asking for one of those hive ships to start firing on the Citadel. The network of of Shields might knock out most weapons, but not all. Something else was going on here. “Rodney, I need more to go on. Explain to me the exact sequence of the Wraith attacks.”
When the scientist had finished, John’s first instinct was to lay into him for failing to see the obvious, but the look of grief and desperation in McKay’s eyes stopped him. The man wasn’t a military tactician. Still, John was too frayed to keep the edge out of his voice when he said, “It didn’t occur to you that the Wraith might have lured you into releasing more oil into South Channel and igniting it?”
“What are you talking about? Why…” Rodney’s voice trailed off and his eyes opened wide with comprehension. “Of course! Damn it!” Balling his fists in frustration, he ranted, “I was working through all this earlier and wanted to ask you about why they’d fall for the same trap twice. Then that voodoo-looking healer insisted on knocking you out, and — just…Damn it!”
Looking confused, Yann asked, “Why would the Wraith wish to do such a thing?”
“To force the population of the Citadel to evacuate,” John replied, walking across to the chart table. Each step sent a stabbing pain through the top of his head. Hoping no one would notice that he needed the support in order to keep standing, he placed his hands on the edge of the table and examined the large animal hide map. The smell of the thing normally wouldn’t have bothered him, but at the moment there weren’t really any sensations that didn’t bother him.
“Evacuate where?” Yann moved to join him. The merchant’s face fell the moment the words were out of his mouth. “Into the unprotected villages! But then why have the Wraith themselves not set fire to the oil that is flowing from Black Hill?”
“As I have explained repeatedly to any number of engineers,” Rodney retorted impatiently, “this particular brand of crude oil needs to be several millimeters thick in order to ignite. Only by backing it up against a raised weir did we have sufficient volume to make that work. Having said that, once ignited, by lowering the weirs, the flames traveled upstream faster than the oil could move down. The converse also applies. Backing up the oil flow again behind raised weirs and dams will starve the fires downstream and extinguish them.”
“Okay, maybe we should start doing just that.” John combed through the maps, trying to find a more detailed plan of the Enclave. “You said the Wraith only invaded the Citadel via the transport at North Bridge?”
His forehead creasing in thought, Rodney replied, “I had assumed that they wanted to open the portcullis protecting the bridge, but in fact they wanted to lower the weir, which would have allowed the fire to spread all the way up to Black Hill.”
Yann looked doubtful. “While it is true that some of the Wraith attempted to capture the bridge, most made for the Enclave.”
Which confirmed what John was beginning to suspect. The Wraith wanted to flush people out of the Citadel, but having captured a Gene, they’d also been trying to get to the Enclave. Maybe Kesun hadn’t been lying about only the Chosen being able to enter the Enclave — the true Enclave, not the temple that was now a burned-out hulk.
Rodney’s fingers traced sight lines across the map of the Citadel. Abruptly they stopped. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me…” He snatched up the map and brandished it front of John’s face. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. The distribution of the Chosen’s homes, the Stations, isn’t random. They form a power grid!”
Despite the medication, John was starting to wonder if it was physiologically possible for his head to explode. “I think we were starting to get that, Rodney, thanks.”
“Yes, but what you didn’t get, and I didn’t understand until now because the Ancient writings — Dalera’s writings, presumably — weren’t as explicit as they should have been, was that when every one of these Stations has a Gene in residence, the grid itself acts as a gigantic capacitor.”
“To power what? The Shields?”
“No, no, no, no, no!” Oddly, Rodney’s jerky dance of barely-contained enthusiasm wasn’t visibly different from his mid-panic attack look. “A weapon!”
“That is why so many at North Bridge fought the Wraith,” Yann said, turning to Rodney. “Although the Chosen had lost the respect of many, with the return of the Wraith and your arrival from Atlantis, all realized that Dalera’s sacred weapon is is not a myth. It must be protected at all costs.”