SGA-16 Homecoming - Book 1 of the Legacy Series Read online

  “My thoughts exactly,” Rodney said.

  Radek rolled his eyes. “You mean my thoughts.”

  “We had similar thoughts,” Rodney said.

  “I am sure you both had the same sensible, prudent thought,” Teyla said, her eyes meeting John’s full of merriment.

  The door opened and Woolsey came in, his jacket severely zipped all the way up. “It’s freezing in the gateroom,” he said.

  “Yes. That’s because people keep flapping the outside doors,” Rodney said. “It’s cold outside. When you open the doors a lot, the heat goes out.”

  “And we cannot heat the whole outdoors,” Radek said wearily.

  “Your mom said that too?” John asked.

  “Yes.” Radek pushed his glasses up on his nose again.

  “We could put a note on the doors asking people to leave them closed,” Woolsey said.

  “Yes,” Rodney agreed. “Someone should get right on it.”

  “The weather is very inclement,” Teyla said.

  “Cold too,” John added.

  “Snowy,” Radek agreed, catching her eye. “I think it will snow.”

  “Can we get on with this meeting?” Rodney said. “Haven’t we all got better things to do than talk about the weather?”

  “You started it,” John said.

  “I did not. Radek started it.”

  “The Stargate,” Woolsey said, blinking. “Is the gate now operable?”

  Rodney nodded. “The gate is operable. But I do feel it my duty to warn you that we are very short of power. We can dial Earth. A limited number of times. And every time we dial Earth, we cut down the amount of time that we’ll be able to run the shield if it becomes necessary. Our ZPMs are at 9 per cent, but that’s all the power we have for the foreseeable future. So—use wisely.”

  “We must dial Earth at least once,” Woolsey said, his fingers tapping on the conference table. “Otherwise they have no idea where we are. The Daedalus and the Hammond are expecting to rendezvous with us at a different position. We have to tell them where we actually are.”

  “We recommend…” Radek began.

  “…a high speed databurst,” Rodney said. “That leaves the gate open the minimum amount of time, and we can get off everything we need, including everyone’s personal emails. We tell them we’ll dial back in 24 hours and get a reply.”

  “Is that safe power consumption?” Woolsey asked.

  Radek and Rodney shrugged at each other.

  “Nothing’s safe,” Rodney said. “But it’s acceptable. We can’t just use no power at all.”

  “And we have to tell them where we are,” John put in. “That’s a bottom line. All of our resupply is going to come out on Daedalus or Hammond, except for what we trade with our allies for.” He nodded across the table at Teyla. “Tomorrow we’re going out to start lining up ducks, finding out what’s happened with our allies. There’s enough power for dialing Pegasus gates, and the sooner we know what’s going on, the better.”

  “Yes,” Woolsey agreed. “We need an intelligence estimate as soon as possible.” He looked at Teyla. “We’ll be relying on your connections, as usual.”

  “I shall do my best,” Teyla assured him.

  Woolsey straightened his jacket. “Then let’s get a camera in here and I’ll record a visual report as well as the written one. Are your reports in?”

  “Mine is,” John said.

  “Um,” Rodney said. “I didn’t get off the gate until one and then I wasted my time giving orientation from two until ten to five. When do you think I wrote a report?”

  “I have the Sciences report,” Radek said.

  “Oh good,” Woolsey said. John thought maybe he was getting used to Gnip and Gnop. “Fine. We’ll be ready to send in a few minutes then.” He glanced around the room, his eyes coming to rest on John. “Time to phone home.”

  * * *

  Huge snowflakes were falling. Teyla paused along the seaward balcony of the control tower, her jacket zipped tight against the wind. It sang through the railings and deserted metal chairs and tables. How not? Often these seats had been favorites, but who would choose to eat their meal out here, in gathering darkness and falling snow? This new world was not like the ones they were used to, balmy breezes and warm sun, for all that they were within twenty degrees of the equator. Already, a fine dusting of snow coated the floor and the surfaces of the tables. She wondered how much there would be before it stopped. Rodney would know. Or he would guess.

  The doors slid open ahead of her, a few flakes whirling on the air, and she stepped into the control room. Rodney was at the first bank of computers, talking into his headset. “No, I cannot put up the shield,” he snapped at someone. “It’s snow, not an alien invasion! Do you think we have the power to run the shield because you don’t want to get your feet wet?” He paused, cupping the earpiece, as the gateroom was also noisy. “Yes, I am a Canadian!” He shook his head and took the headset off, laying it on the board beside him and scratching his ear.

  Teyla caught his eye and smiled. “We should run the shield to keep off the snow?”

  “Yeah. Like that will happen. It’s a few centimeters! Everyone can cope!”

  “I agree,” Teyla said tranquilly.

  Rodney stopped in midstream. “Good.”

  Teyla very carefully did not look around. What she was asking was personal, not secret. Woolsey was by chance not in his office. No doubt he had gone to eat dinner. And if John were not around either, surely he had other things to do than hang around the gateroom. “I was wondering if now that you had recalibrated the gate and called Earth…”

  Rodney scratched his head again, and it came to her that his hair was thinning on top. None of them were as young as they used to be. His eyes met hers frankly. “You were wondering if we could dial New Athos.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know it will use power, but…”

  “Pennies,” Rodney dismissed it. “Dialing a Pegasus gate is peanuts. Not like running the shield to keep the snow off the balcony. I can dial New Athos for you. In fact,” he put his head to the side. “I figured you’d ask.”

  “Just long enough for a radio message,” Teyla said. “That is all. So that my people may know that we live and are well. I will not give them the gate address or anything that might require Mr. Woolsey’s permission.”

  “I know,” Rodney said. He leaned back, stretching along the board, and hit the first key, Tail of the Dragon. Amelia Banks and the new one, Taggart, lifted their heads at the sound of the chevron locking. “Dialing New Athos,” Rodney said clearly.

  Amelia gave Teyla a smile, and Taggart wasn’t about to question anything Rodney did. He was Chief of Sciences, and if he wanted to dial the gate, he could.

  “Let me get the wormhole established, and the radio is all yours,” Rodney said.

  The gate dialed cleanly, the wormhole exploding in a blue flash and settling. It took so very little time, really. She had not decided what to say. What was there to say, after five months? What could she say, before Rodney and the gateroom, before all of New Athos?

  Rodney handed her the headset. “Here you go.”

  Teyla slid it over her ear. “New Athos, this is Atlantis.” Her voice gained strength from that. She was not merely Teyla. She was Atlantis. “New Athos, this is Atlantis. Please respond.”

  There was a crackle, and then an incredulous voice. “Atlantis? That is not possible.”

  “Halling?” Teyla was surprised to feel her eyes filling. “Halling, this is Teyla.”

  “Teyla?” She felt her heart would burst at the rush of joy in his voice. She could see where he must be, in his tent by night, the radio they had given him silent these many months, but still clearly kept within arms’ reach. “Teyla? It cannot be! We heard that Atlantis was destroyed. The gate has been dead. We have dialed and dialed, and we thought…”

  “I know that you thought us gone,” Teyla said quickly. “We are no longer at the same address, but w
e live. The city lives. We are well and whole, Torren and I, and Ronon and Dr. Beckett and Dr. Keller and Colonel Sheppard and all the rest.”

  Even now he might be sending someone for Kanaan. Of course he would be. She could imagine his brow furrowing. “We have thought you lost,” Halling said. “Why did you not…”

  “We did not have the power to dial from where we were,” Teyla said swiftly with a sideways glance at Rodney. “But now that we do, I have called you as soon as I might.”

  “Atlantis lives,” he said, as though it were just now striking him, that city as well as people survived.

  “The city is well and whole as we,” Teyla said. Surely he was sending for Kanaan, and what should she say? There was nothing that could suffice, and she did not want the recriminations she richly deserved before half the city, that everyone should speak of it and know what passed. Enough that all of her people would pass their judgments. “Halling, we have been in great peril. And yet we are safe now, as safe as anyone may be. I feared that some ill might have befallen you, yet I guess now that is not so?”

  “We have seen no Wraith, if that is what you mean,” Halling said. “But we have little to Cull at this point, and our trades have been cautious. We had a fever run through last month, and many were taken ill who have now recovered. Soen died three tendays ago, but he had long been ailing with the sickness in his lungs. It was not a surprise that the fever took him.”

  “I sorrow at that,” Teyla said, and her voice broke. A fever. If they had been here, perhaps Jennifer could have done something for Soen. Her medicine might not permit a man to die of a fever that went to his lungs.

  “Otherwise, we are well enough,” Halling said. “The grain is high in the field, and the beans have come in. The first fruits of the harvest are upon us.”

  “That is good to hear indeed,” Teyla said.

  “Do you come through the Ring of the Ancestors?” Halling asked. “There are many here who would see you.”

  “No. Not now,” Teyla said swiftly. “I cannot yet. But I will come as soon as I may.” She gave Rodney a swift, sideways glance. “Tell Kanaan that Torren is well, and I will come when I can.”

  “He will be glad to hear that,” Halling said. “He has…”

  “I must go,” Teyla said. “I will come to New Athos soon. Farewell, my friend.”

  “Farewell,” Halling said, and there was a note of perplexity in his voice. Perhaps he thought some danger threatened her even this moment. It might, from the speed with which she cut the gate.

  Her hands on the board, Teyla closed her eyes.

  Rodney put his arm around her, and she looked up at him, startled. “It’s ok,” Rodney said.

  “No. It is not,” she said quietly. “I know when I do wrong.”

  “I think you’re awfully hard on yourself,” Rodney said, and his smile quirked sideways. “You’re not the only person to get off the phone in a hurry when you call home.”

  Teyla looked up at his frank blue eyes, at the soaring arches of the gateroom behind him. “This is home,” she said. “And that is the problem.”

  “You’re not the only one there either,” he said. “If Jennifer had said she wasn’t coming back…”

  “She did not,” Teyla said.

  Rodney nodded. “She didn’t. Bullet dodged, until next time.”

  Teyla leaned against him and put her head against Rodney’s shoulder. “Perhaps there will not be a next time. But I will have to face my people sooner or later. And I will have to explain why it is that I will not come home this time. When will I return? When will I stay?”

  “And what’s the answer?” Rodney said quietly. “Or does that depend?”

  She lifted her head sharply. “It does not depend on anything that it should not. I have done nothing that I may not speak the truth about.”

  “I know that,” Rodney said seriously. “But.”

  “There is no but,” Teyla said. “And sooner or later I must go.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Established Relations

  It was a long walk from the gate to the trade village. The anthropologists who’d been on the first Atlantis expedition had started to classify Pegasus societies by where they built in relation to the Stargates. Some societies settled as far away as practical; those tended to be agricultural, if Sheppard remembered the report correctly, the ones that evaded the Wraith rather than trying to fight them. Some built their cities around the gates, and fought back when the Wraith appeared. Neither tactic worked very well, in Sheppard’s opinion, and it didn’t account for the Genii—nothing accounted for the Genii—but it was a start.

  The Tricti had to be on the far end of the ‘build far away’ spectrum, though: not only was the settlement a good hour’s hike from the gate, it wasn’t even a permanent village, just a trading post. Visitors weren’t welcome in their real home, and any inquiries were none too subtly discouraged…

  To either side of the trail, high grass stretched to a line of trees. They were just about a bowshot away, and Sheppard’s shoulderblades twitched at the thought. The Tricti were friendly, or they had been, but there was something weird about the whole thing. Too many weeds, he realized suddenly, there were too many weeds growing in the path.

  “Yes,” Teyla said. “I see it, too. But I do not sense the Wraith.”

  “If there was a Culling,” Sheppard began, and Teyla shrugged.

  “We would not know it. Not yet, and perhaps never. The Tricti do not share their troubles.”

  “What?” Rodney asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nobody’s been using the path,” Ronon said. He had his blaster drawn, held it loosely at his side. “Not good.”

  Rodney glanced at the scanner in his hand, and then at the woods to either side. “There’s no sign of life, but that’s normal here. They never show up except when we get to the village.”

  “Yeah,” Sheppard said, and hoped it was true. He was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. “Let’s get a move on, people.”

  “But gently,” Teyla said. She smiled. “The Tricti often misinterpret hurry.”

  They finally reached the top of the last low hill, stopped for a moment to be sure the Tricti had seen them—as Teyla said, they did not wish to be a surprise. Sheppard looked down into the circle of rough wooden buildings, all too aware that there was no smoke rising from any of the chimneys. Not that it was a cold day, but there should be cooking fires, and a crowd waiting at the well that stood in the center of the circle, summoned by the opening of the Stargate. Today the beaten dirt was empty, the houses shuttered, doorways gaping empty on darkness.

  “It looks abandoned,” Teyla said, frowning.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Rodney said. “Why would they do that?”

  “The Wraith?” Ronon said, but he didn’t sound sure.

  “Trictinia has been Culled many times,” Teyla said. “The trade village has always remained.”

  Sheppard sighed. He didn’t like the look of this, didn’t like the feeling the empty square left in the pit of his stomach. “Let’s check it out.”

  “Wait!” Rodney held out the scanner. “Look, there is someone—”

  “Arin!” Teyla called, in the same moment, and Sheppard sighed again as a familiar figure stepped out of the shadow of the nearest house. “Arin, it is good to see you again.” She went down the hill at a near run, the others following more slowly, and the Tricti came to meet her, worn face relaxing into a smile.

  “Teyla Emmagan. We did not dream—when the gate lit, we had no idea it could be you.”

  They embraced formally, touching foreheads, and then in friendship, Teyla’s face for once unguarded. “Arin, you remember Colonel Sheppard and Ronon. And Dr. McKay.”

  “We had heard that Atlantis was destroyed,” the Tricti said. “I’m glad to see it wasn’t true.”

  “We fought a great battle,” Teyla said. More than ever, Sheppard was glad to leave the explanations to her. “And we have return
ed victorious. But we have need of trading partners once again.”

  “I’m sorry.” The Tricti spread his hands. “Glad of your victory, yes, and of your return, we have need of you. But we have nothing to spare. The elders have forbidden trade until a better day.”

  “What does that mean?” Rodney asked.

  Teyla ignored him. “We have been good allies in the past,” she said. “Good partners and good friends. I hope that has not changed.”

  “No, indeed,” Arin said, with what sounded like genuine fervor. “And if you can offer medicines and weapons, the elders may be willing to reconsider. But we were hard hit not half a year ago, and there is little enough for us to live on.”

  “That is hard news,” Teyla said.

  “The Wraith?” Sheppard asked.

  Arin nodded. “They came in force, more than they have come in years. We lost—too many, and our fields were burned, those that they could find.”

  “It sounds like they’ve gotten better organized since we left,” Rodney said.

  Sheppard nodded. That wasn’t a nice idea—he’d really hoped they’d stay locked in civil war without somebody like Todd to pull them together.

  “There is a new queen,” Arin said. “A queen of queens, so rumor says. She has gathered many of the hives under her control.”

  “Great,” Sheppard said, and Teyla frowned at him.

  “All the more reason for us to continue our alliance,” she said, and Arin shrugged.

  “I don’t disagree, Teyla Emmagan. And I will take your word to the elders, you may be sure of it.” He smiled. “Though it would help if I could tell them you would trade what we need.”

  “We’d need to talk to our—elders—about that, too,” Sheppard said. “But—I bet we can work something out.”

  “We are also in need of information,” Teyla said. “This is the first we have heard of a new alliance among the Wraith, and it is not pleasant hearing.”