A/N: I've been trying to write more lately, and to my surprise, it's working. I'm on point with my target for October - 25k words by the end of the month. That's the run-up to NaNoWriMo in November, which I plan to do. (Keep your fingers crossed; I only managed to win NaNo once.) Any of you trying NaNo this year? You can add me to your writing buddies if you want: I'm Amelia_E_Adler there too.
As always, my eternal thanks to everyone who keeps commenting, and for all favs/follows! Please keep 'em coming :) I'm always curious about what you think!
Chapter 6, part 1
Father Lawrence was looking at Sheppard expectantly, but the Atlantis' military commander was silent for the moment. Alice was thinking about what she'd just heard. It was a chilling thought to realize how close they had gotten to near complete annihilation themselves. If they didn't find the cure for the plague, this could well be their own story—with the exception of the Asgard part of it. Would the Asgard help them had they not found a way to beat the Ori? Alice thought they would. They did leave all of their legacy to them, the humans of Earth; even if they couldn't help to win against the Ori, they had not been tied up by the Replicators at that point—not in this reality—and so could probably spare more spacecraft, and quicker—maybe quickly enough to save more people. Still, there was one version of Earth where seven billion people were reduced to twelve hundred in a matter of months…
That didn't sound right, though.
"The Prior Plague couldn't have killed all of them," she said aloud, surprising everyone, including herself. With all of their eyes trailed on her, she had to continue. "It's mathematically and geographically impossible. There are more people in places that are completely isolated, where the Plague couldn't have been brought. Deep in the Amazon, in certain parts of Africa, Himalaya, Tibet..."
Lawrence shook his head. "I don't know. There were twelve hundred of us crammed onto the Billiskner and the Daedalus. All the survivors they could find."
Alice exchanged a dubious look with Cooper.
"What?" The father was visibly anxious now.
"I'm sorry," Alice said softly. "I don't think they told you the truth."
"What do you mean?" Now the clergyman looked alarmed.
"It is more likely that whoever was making decisions back then, had to pick and choose whom to save and whom to leave behind," Alice explained in a sympathetic tone. "It's the old moral dilemma, only reversed. They had to sacrifice many to save a few; otherwise, all would be lost."
"But there was still plenty of room on the ship!" Lawrence protested.
"I told you, it's not about room," McKay cut in, but without his usual snark. "The life support system can sustain a very precise population, anything more and everyone would suffocate and die."
"You said it yourself," Cooper added, "the Earth was gone. The Ori would kill or convert whoever was left after the Plague has run its course. You had to flee, and saving a few hundred people was better than saving none."
Lawrence didn't reply, but looked down on his hands linked together on his lap. For a long while, nobody said anything.
"I guess I always knew," he sighed eventually. "I just didn't want to face the truth. But then"—he raised his head—"we took over six thousand people aboard as we fled from the Wraith, and we didn't suffocate."
"You would have if you spent there a bit more time," Alice explained in a soft voice. "The Asgard systems are extremely efficient, even on a ship this old, so it allowed you to survive for the little while it took for you to jump to the other star system and crash into the planet. But it wouldn't extend beyond a few more hours."
"Who are the other survivors here? Who is your leader?" Sheppard asked.
"There is none," the father replied simply. "We had followed Doctor Carter and the military command at first, but they all perished during the attack of the Wraith. What is left is a hodge-podge of young and old, former city-dwellers and countrymen, people of all races, many nationalities, and various professions." He paused for a moment. "We are now one with the Lacronans. We live among them, we work together, we make families. The four others who live in our village, they all married Lacronans, one of them even has a baby boy already." He looked serenely into Sheppard's eyes. "We found home here. I can't speak for the others, but as for me, this is where I belong."
"What do you preach now?" Cooper's eyes were glistening with avid interest.
"What I've always preached. That there is a God and he loves us all."
Will wanted to pursue the subject further, but Perrault put his hand on the anthropologist's shoulder and so he fell silent again.
Sheppard exchanged looks with McKay and Teyla. Some unspoken agreement flowed between them, Alice saw, their team being so close that they could communicate without speaking.
"Well, you can guess that our story is somewhat different than yours," Sheppard allowed. "Here, the Earth is still there, safe and sound, although it's been close a couple of times."
"You knew of the Prior Plague, though." Lawrence turned to Alice. "How did you avoid it?"
"We didn't." Alice shook her head. "It struck us, too, something like three thousand people died all told. It spread incredibly quickly, but we managed to get a cure."
"How?"
"We had help. An Ancient named Orlin, and a Jaffa turned Prior who had a change of heart. And a lot of hard work by our own genius, Colonel Samantha Carter."
Lawrence started, hearing the name. "Colonel? Your Carter is military?"
"Yes, indeed. She had been the leader of our Pegasus expedition for a year last year," Sheppard added.
"What is this expedition? How come there are people in the Pegasus?"
"You know about the Ancients, right?"
Lawrence nodded. "The Lacronans call them the Ancestors."
"Yeah, that's because they have been the ones to create life in both our galaxies." Sheppard shrugged. "They fled the Ori into Milky Way and made their civilization there first. At some point they constructed a ship, which was also a city, and flew it here, to the Pegasus."
"A ship that was also a city?" The clergyman repeated dubiously.
"Yep. It floats on the water and can fly through space, but it's a city alright."
"Wait, present tense?"
"Oh, yeah." Sheppard smiled a bit mischievously. "It's grand."
"The point is that the Ancients seeded life in this galaxy as they had done previously in the Milky Way," McKay picked up the story in an annoyed tone. "But they were all full of themselves and snotty and created their own enemy who drove them away."
"There is no conclusive evidence that the Ancestors were the ones who did create the Wraith," Teyla corrected. "But it does seem rather likely."
"The Ancients fled through the Stargate on Atlantis back to Earth..." Sheppard continued, but Lawrence interrupted him:
"Atlantis? The lost city?"
"That's where the myth is from." The colonel nodded. "Anyway, the city was left underwater for ten thousand years. In that time, the Wraith wakened periodically and culled the population of the galaxy; always leaving enough to be viable, though. Until we came and kinda messed that up."
"We found the eight chevron..." McKay begun, but Sheppard cut him off:
"We came through the Stargate from Earth, but the city was underwater and the shield was failing. We could not dial Earth again—no power—but we did manage to dial another Gate in the Pegasus. We arrived on Athos. Got attacked by Wraith, and, well, long story short, we awakened them ahead of schedule. We've been fighting them ever since."
"That is..." Lawrence's words failed him. "What about the Earth and the Ori?"
"Oh, we beat them." Sheppard frowned and asked the rest of them: "How did we beat them?"
"Merlin's weapon and the Ark of Truth," Alice replied.
"Excuse me, did you say Merlin?" The father's eyebrows went all the way up.
"Yes. Merlin was an Ancient." Alice smiled. "Despite how ridiculous that sounds. It's a long story, but in the end we managed to obtain a weapon he had devised that could destroy ascended beings. We sent it to the Ori galaxy, but of course it still left several ships full of zealous Ori followers and Priors to deal with."
"And how did you deal with it?"
"Another Ancient device, called Ark of Truth." Alice smirked. "It worked as advertised. It was enough for someone to look into it, and it showed them the truth, they had to believe it. We used it on Priors and their followers to make them realize not only that their gods were lying to them all that time, but also that they were now dead."
"We're friends now," Sheppard added with a big grin. "That's us, making friends wherever we go."
"Should I remind you of the Genii?" McKay puffed.
"Hey, we're allies now!"
"Better a reluctant ally than an enemy, but I'd hesitate to call them friends," Teyla put in.
"Anyway." Alice felt they were digressing too much. "The Milky Way is more or less safe now. There are still some remaining pockets of Goa'uld or warring Jaffa, and there's a new crime syndicate called Lucian Alliance that tries to fill the vacuum left behind by the System Lords, but those aren't threats of the magnitude we'd seen earlier."
"The Wraith are a problem, though." Sheppard was serious now. "One fraction managed to get to Earth recently. We were able to fend them off and we're reasonably sure they didn't transmit the coordinates to any other Hive, but it took us flying Atlantis all the way to Milky Way to get rid of them."
"That is where we are coming from," Teyla explained. "We chose this planet for Atlantis' new home because it was supposed to be uninhabited."
"Well it was until something like three years ago." Lawrence nodded pensively. "But I can see why you would like to check us out before landing. Am I correct to assume that your ship is in the orbit?"
"Yes. We…" Sheppard begun, but then fell silent; they all (save the father, of course) heard Sergeant Karim's quiet voice in their ears.
"I have movement here, a bigger party this time."
Sheppard raised his eyebrows and looked at Lawrence.
"Expecting someone?"
The clergyman shook his head. "But I wouldn't be surprised if others wanted to come and talk to you same as I did, even though they don't trust you."
"Let's see." The colonel stood up and the rest of them followed, the Earthlings and Teyla casually putting their palms over the triggers of their P90s or on the butts of their Berettas. It took at least five minutes for the group of newcomers to appear between the trees; Karim must have had super-human hearing to have noticed them so early. Four men and three women, all dressed in the same drab garments made of the local wool, but six of them were armed; half with long, curved knives, and the other three—with Earth-made sidearms, looking very out of place. The seventh person was Hlava, the village elder the Atlantians had met the day before.
"Father!" She exclaimed as they were still some distance away. "God bless, you are safe, we were so afraid for you!"
Alice shot a furtive look at Lawrence and saw his face harden into a mask, hiding whatever emotions he might feel. He didn't reply right away, but waited for the party to come near them and then gave them a long, respectful bow, which Hlava reciprocated, followed after a moment by the others. Doren and Earah were there, both clutching knives and shooting vigilant glances around—but not at the Atlantians, standing in a casual semi-circle, now joined also by Ronon. Karim stayed put but Alice saw he was turned towards them now, watching like a hawk, his finger on the trigger. Alice was quite certain that he could fire before any of the Lacronans could even lift their hand. Still, it was curious that the newcomers should be ignoring the armed people in front of them and look about for… what? Animals? Or something worse? Then she suddenly understood and gasped involuntarily. Her eyes were wide like saucers when she looked at Perrault and saw his eyebrows climb up his forehead in a silent question.
"Wraith," she mouthed to him. His face constricted into a frown.
"I wanted to talk to these people myself," Lawrence explained calmly, but there was a certain strain in his voice that Alice didn't hear before. "I didn't realize I'd be missed so quickly. I apologize for worrying you." And he inclined his head again.
Hlava threw a cautious look at the Atlantians.
"You can speak, Mother. They know everything now," the priest encouraged her, but before she could say anything, one of the people accompanying her—a man, wielding a pistol—spoke with barely hidden fury:
"You told them?" He advanced on Lawrence, shaking his armed hand. "After we talked, and pleaded, for hours yesterday, you went and disregarded the agreement!"
"It was your agreement, not mine, Chester," Lawrence replied coolly, unimpressed with the weapon brandished before his face. "I never said I would comply with it."
"You fucking idiot!" Chester yelled, but before he could do anything more, Hlava put her restraining hand on his shoulder, and he shivered, half-turned to look at her, and then stepped back with a vague grumble.
"Hey, girls and boys, let's relax," Sheppard said, stepping up from the semi-circle to stand next to Lawrence. "We're all friends here."
"It's true." The father nodded gravely. "They are from Earth. This universe's Earth is still alive and well."
"What are they doing here?" Another man holding a sidearm asked, looking at Sheppard suspiciously.
"Like us, they came here to hide before the Wraith," Lawrence replied placidly. "But if you mean here as in the Pegasus… they came to explore it." He paused for a moment. "We used to be explorers, too."
"Our exploring brought doom on us," Chester reminded him cuttingly. He seemed calmer now, but Hlava's hand was still on his shoulder. "They cannot stay here. They would bring the Wraith with them."
"I think we don't need to bring them 'ere," Perrault interjected, stepping up to stand at the other side of Lawrence. "They're already here."
Sheppard shot him a surprised look, but Perrault was gazing at Hlava, his face smooth, not showing any emotion.
For a moment, the only sound was that of the distant waves beating on the shore and the wind rustling in the treetops. Then, slowly, Hlava nodded.
"That is why we were so afraid for the Father," she admitted. "They came with us on the ship, from our planet. They were the ones who sabotaged the ship into crashing."
Sheppard and Perrault both nodded at the exact same moment and despite the gravity of the situation, Alice had to strain not to smile.
"They fled into the forest afterwards," Hlava continued. "They have been harassing us ever since. They never attack large groups, but going out alone or in small company is dangerous." She paused for a moment. "We have just lost one of our own tonight."
Lawrence started badly. "Who?"
"Jayin."
Alice froze in surprise. She knew the name.
"The girl who sang David Bowie?" She asked, though of course she knew the answer. The pretty young thing they'd encountered the day before… She had been walking home, in the middle of the village. Could it be that the Wraith were there, so close? "Teyla, did you sense anything last night?"
The Athosian shook her head. "No, I'm quite sure there wasn't any Wraith in the vicinity." But her voice was doubtful, too.
"We are very sorry for your loss," Sheppard said to Hlava and she bowed in response. Then he added deliberately: "We could help you with this problem."
"We have guns, we can protect ourselves!" Chester brandished his pistol again.
Sheppard looked at him coolly. "You have to put between ten and twenty nine-millimeter bullets into a well-fed Wraith to stop him coming. Sure, you can do this with a Beretta, but you'd better be fast."
"It doesn't seem that you can protect yourselves very well, or Jayin wouldn't be dead, now, would she?" McKay added tactlessly.
"How do you propose to find them?" Chester continued in his aggressive tone.
"We have our ways." Sheppard threw a quick glance at Teyla. "Listen, guys. If you don't want our help, that's fine. We'll go our own way. But I think we could all benefit from an alliance."
Hlava looked at Lawrence for a moment, the two of them communicating without words; then shifted her eyes towards the colonel and bowed low.
"If you are able to free us of the Wraith harassing our villages," she said, "we will be forever in your debt."
Sheppard smiled and nodded. "Great! We shall see to it, then. You people better get back to your village. We'll give you a lift. Boyd, will you drive these fine people back, please?"
"Yes, sir." Alice turned to the group. "Will you follow me, please?"
"Where are we going? You have a ship parked here somewhere?" Chester asked as soon as they began walking towards the edge of the clearing.
"Yes, sir." Alice guessed politeness could work to appease the man a bit. He was definitely the most nervous of all of them.
"Where?"
Alice didn't respond. They were on the level with Karim, standing a hundred paces to their right now. He acknowledged them with a slight nod of his head and turned around to look at the forest again. Alice took out the remote from one of her pockets and a second later where there had been nothing, a Jumper appeared out of thin air. A choir of aahs sounded from behind her as she opened the rear door.
"We call it a Puddle Jumper," Alice explained, gesturing for them to follow her in. "It's something we inherited from the Ancients."
"Inherited?" Hlava asked dubiously. "They were our Ancestors."
"Ours too." Alice smiled to her. "The Jumper is only one of the pieces of technology we are using that came from the Ancients. It is built so that it can easily fit inside a Stargate and has a powerful weapons system."
"What if the Wraith were to get it?" Chester asked skittishly. "They don't need another advantage."
"The Wraith would be unable to operate it." Alice sat down in the pilot seat. "The Jumper can only be operated by a person who has a certain gene." She put her hands on the console and it lit up. She heard a gasp from somewhere behind her—whose, she couldn't say. "It's very rare among humans, and non-existent in any other species, as far as we know." She turned around to look at the eight of them, Hlava and Lawrence sitting in the front compartment, the rest in the rear. "It's literally the legacy of the Ancients. After they fled from this galaxy, they went back to the Milky Way and mingled among humans there. Those of us who have the gene are descendants of those Ancients."
Hlava nodded, a bit nervously, and Alice turned around to bring the Jumper up. The passengers in the back were quiet; they looked around with wonder in their eyes, even those who came from the alternative Earth. This was a novelty for all of them, and Alice knew that they must have been thinking of the last time they were on a ship. That one had been much, much bigger, and of a completely different design, but it wasn't that big of a stretch. They came here crashing down in a spaceship; no wonder they were apprehensive to go up again.
Ten minutes later Alice was over the downed Asgard ship, her own little Jumper like a fly against the huge body of the wreck. On Sheppard's orders, she turned the cloak off, and hung in the air for a while, visible to all that could lift their heads and look above the tree line. Then she went down slowly, landing in the exact same spot she had embarked from. Once firmly on the ground, she exited the craft, leaving the cloak off, and walked briskly to the edge of the forest, where the rest of her team was waiting.
"Do we know how many of them there are?" Cooper was saying as she joined them.
"No, but it can't be too many." Perrault shook his head.
"My best guess would be six or seven," Alice contributed. "That's based on the number of victims. I asked Hlava for an estimate. They get news from the other villages," she added. "Although if they hibernate, it may be more than that." She turned around to see her Jumper, looking abandoned and lonely at the edge of the clearing. "What's the plan, sir?"
"Sheppard wants to attract them to us," Perrault explained. "A trap, you see."
"That's what your little dance was for," Cooper added. "We're the bait."
"So I figured." Alice smiled, but she didn't feel very confident. She didn't want to show just how anxious she was, though, so she didn't ask the question that was on her mind: what if there's more of them than we predicted? Instead, she pulled the life signs and energy detector from her pocket and looked at it, frowning. There were four dots clustered in the middle; she knew that was herself and her team. Four more were moving slowly at an angle towards the edge of the screen, away from the shipwreck.
"How far can it see?" Will asked, looking over her shoulder.
"A hundred meters. There's nobody around, except for the First Team, sir," she reported to Perrault.
"Good, keep throwing an eye on it," the commandant ordered and Alice smirked at the half-borrowed expression. Sometimes, if not for his French accent, it was almost possible to forget he was a foreigner, so good was his English; and then he said something that was a marvelous mix of the two languages or even a direct translation of the French word or expression that didn't make any sense in English.
"Listen, guys, not for nothing, but it is a big forest," Cooper carped, waving around them. "If this little trick ain't gonna work… how are we gonna find the Wraith?"
"They'll find us, don't worry," Perrault assured him.
"We could always use Atlantis' sensors," Alice suggested. "They won't tell us which dot is human and which is Wraith, but we could isolate those that seem suspicious and check. You heard the Lacronans, they don't go anywhere unless in a large party."
"Good idea." Perrault praised and touched his earpiece to relay this to Sheppard.
"How long do you think it should take them to come here if they are coming?" Cooper asked Alice while the commandant spoke on the radio. Karim was standing a few paces off and to Alice looked like a wild cat about to pounce. He was looking around vigilantly, his head cocked just a little to the side (to hear better, Alice assumed), his finger on the trigger ceaselessly, not saying anything at all. Still, Alice felt his eyes lingering on herself a few times, and felt nervous because of it. Did he sense how apprehensive she was? It often seemed to her as if his deep black eyes peered right into her soul, baring all that she'd rather remain hidden. Even here and now, as they waited for terrible life-sucking aliens to appear, he made her feel uncomfortable.
"No idea. I guess it depends on where they are," Alice replied, willing herself to break out of the uneasy mood her teammate's eyes had cast her into. "Although we know that at least one of them was near the village in the night. It's a half-day journey, according to the Lacronans, but that's for humans. For a Wraith? Two or three hours, maybe?"
"That assuming they weren't already on their way here." Karim surprised them by speaking for the first time since the morning. "If they were watching the village, they must have seen Hlava's party leave and may have followed."
"They might have even seen us there yesterday," Perrault put in, having completed his radio exchange. "Zelenka is going to check Atlantis' sensors," he informed them. "Something on the detector?"
"No, sir." The only change was that Sheppard's team had disappeared from the screen, having walked out of its range.
Perrault nodded and for a moment they all stood there silently. But Cooper wouldn't be himself if he didn't try to fill in every moment with talk.
"This was quite a twist, now, wasn't it?" He shook his head incredulously. "Not only to find humans here on this planet, but people from an alternative Earth! I wonder that they should adapt so easily to the life among the Lacronans... and so deeply as to believe themselves belonging with them!"
He continued to chatter away. Alice wondered if any of them would like to come back to Earth, now that they knew that in this reality it was all safe and sound. They would never be able to go back to their old lives; some of them may not even exist in this version of the universe. But those who do—they couldn't very well swoop in and talk to their equivalents or their families here. That would create quite a bit of panic. By the way, Alice thought, her eyes stuck to the life signs detector, but unseeing for the moment, how come they are not experiencing the entropic cascade failure? Her own reality and that of Father Lawrence did seem quite close, but there were very important differences—suffice to mention the Replicators, which were destroyed in one universe and alive and still warring with the Asgard in the other. Still, it must have been close enough. She thought of alternative universes that might be far, far different from her own. Somewhere, there was an Alice who did not enter the Air Force and went for a career in science instead. Somewhere, there was an Alice whose father was not dead. And somewhere, she mused, muting Cooper's cascade of words to a low hum, there was a universe where none of it were true, where Alice Boyd was a conjecture in someone's fancy, maybe a book character or a TV show hero. You're hardly a hero, sweetpea, she scorned herself and felt an urge to laugh that she restrained with an effort. It wouldn't do to laugh in the middle of Will's tirade, although by now she wasn't quite sure what he was prattling about. She lifted her head and caught Karim's eyes piercing her for just a second, and thought she saw a shadow of amusement on his face—but he smoothly shifted his gaze and continued to look around warily, and Alice was left none the wiser. Sure, it was not a smile, but she could have sworn his eyes twinkled with mirth. That was ridiculous, though. Eyes were expressive, but not enough to see emotion in them without a change of facial expression to go along—right?
It was Zelenka's voice in her earpiece that brought her out of the reverie.
"We can see them on the city's sensors," he said. "At least we think it's them. Your little trap worked—they are converging on the clearing. There's six of them, and they're coming from the north and east, but they're evenly spaced, something like six or seven hundred meters between them. They're still a way out—at least three kilometers."
"Good thinking with the sensors, Perrault," Sheppard replied over the radio and the Frenchman smiled and nodded at Alice, acknowledging the compliment should have gone to her.
"There is one problem, though," Zelenka added apprehensively. "We can't see you on the sensors."
"What do you mean you can't see us?" It was McKay who entered the conversation, his voice annoyed.
"I mean your life signs don't register. No life signs register anywhere around the Asgard ship, not even animals'. It must be emitting some sort of energy field that is disrupting our sensors."
"What range?"
"Around two kilometers from the ship's core."
"Alright," Sheppard sighed into his earpiece. "Let's break up into four teams of two. We'll take the three on the east, you guys go get the ones coming from the north. We'll then comb the woods around the ship for any stragglers."
"Yes, sir," Perrault answered and then turned to his team. "This is our first mission all together. Should be easy, but be vigilant. Me and Cooper will take the one most westerly, Karim and Boyd, you'll go after the one most easterly. Once we get rid of these two, we'll converge on the middle one."
"Yes, sir," Alice and Karim said in unison. Cooper laughed at that, and then made an about-face to follow Perrault out of the clearing and into the forest.
"You lead," Alice told Karim and he nodded and started towards the tree line. He set a brisk pace and Alice knew that she would be winded by the time they reached the vicinity of the Wraith. She didn't want to say anything, though. Her pride would not suffer a blow like this, if she had to ask to go slower.
Karim moved like a ghost through the woods, almost never disturbing any leaves or bushes, his feet never stepping on a branch. Once again, Alice felt like a bull in a china store, her uniform and vest snatching on every shrub they passed, her heavy boots snapping every stick on her way. She tried to walk in Karim's exact path and imitate his movements, but it helped but a little. She was just not made for such a thing.
She kept glancing on the portable life signs detector she took out of the Jumper—which was working perfectly, so it was curious that Atlantis' sensors should not—but it was the sergeant who first noticed movement somewhere ahead of them. He stopped abruptly, his fist lifted in the gesture meaning halt. Alice did, peering around him but although she had an excellent eyesight, she could not see anything for a long while, until, a good two minutes later, she did notice something moving between the trees, far away still. It could be the goat-like antelope, or the wild cat they had heard the day before… or a Wraith. She corrected her grip of the P90 in her right hand, still clutching the detector in her left.
Karim looked around at her, straightening two of his fingers and moving his hand in the go left and around gesture, but his eyebrows were raised and Alice understood that he was waiting for her confirmation. She was the officer, though she felt like a child at an adults' table. She nodded assent, he turned around and continued straight on slightly bent legs, his finger never leaving the trigger. Alice moved slower now, trying to make the least sound possible, and—in her own opinion—still failing. She went at a curved angle left of Karim, and the vegetation was so thick that she quickly lost him from view. She still saw movement out of the corner of her eye and knew it was him, but it was so slight that it could have been made by a deer—or an antelope.
Now walking alone, with her senses sharpened by adrenaline, Alice was acutely aware of the heavy, oppressive character of these unsettlingly huge and living woods. Every tiny movement of a leaf rustled by a whiff of wind seemed like a gale, every creak of a branch under her foot like a thunder. The rays of sunshine breaking through the thick foliage looked like columns of light among deep shadows of the giant trees. Alice felt small and insignificant. The forest's creepy aura was getting on her nerves, even as she kept repeating to herself not to be silly.
A couple of minutes passed until a new dot appeared on the life signs detector, slightly left of Karim's path. It seemed that the Brit knew it, too, because he was angling slowly in that direction. Alice was farther west, so they were flanking the approaching enemy. A movement caught her eye some fifty yards away and for the first time in her life, Alice beheld a Wraith.
She had seen them on photos previously, of course, but still the physique of the alien made her shiver. The greenish-blue tint of his skin gleamed sickly, as if it were a plastic mask reflecting off the light. The slit on his cheek made it look as if he had a gill, and indeed something about his mucky face vaguely reminded Alice of fish. White, messy hair fell in a slight wave onto his shoulders, contrasting with the black outfit he was wearing. He moved cautiously, half-crouched, his yellow eyes with vertical pupils opened wide.
Alice froze in place. If she could see him, could he see her? She thought he hadn't yet, but the smallest movement could potentially catch his attention. Very slowly, she put the life signs detector into a pocket of her vest, and then lifted her P90, equally carefully. The gun had 200 meters of effective range, and the Wraith was much closer than that. There was no way she could miss him. So why wasn't she shooting? Pull that trigger, you fucking idiot! She yelled at herself internally. But something still prevented her. It wasn't fear; with the adrenaline pumping through her body, all fear seemed to have washed away. So what was it?
It's not human! She screamed to herself silently as seconds ticked by, and yet she still wasn't shooting. It's not like killing a person! But wasn't it? The Wraith were intelligent. They exhibited real emotions, they formed societies, maybe even had a culture? They feed on humans, you stupid fuck. It's us or them. Pull that motherfucking trigger!
But it was too late. The Wraith had moved out of the line of sight, hidden now behind a clump of bushes as tall as a person. Alice dropped the gun and exhaled. Fuck!
It was so quiet that the staccato of the weapon discharge from her right made her jump. She heard an inhuman, wailing cry of pain, more gunshots, and then—silence.
She walked around the intruding bush slowly, with the P90 pointing downwards. What was wrong with her? Why on Earth didn't she shoot? It was a Wraith, an alien, for goodness' sake, and not only one who hated humanity and sought to dominate them as the Goa'uld had; no, this time it was more vital, more visceral than that. The Wraith had to feed on humans to survive. They killed people to live, it was that simple. There was no reason to beat about the bush: either they would destroy them, or be destroyed. This time she was lucky to have Karim as backup, but she could never hesitate ever again.
He was standing over the body of the alien, his gun also pointed down, but his finger still on the trigger. Alice cleared her throat.
"Good job," she said, trying for neutral tone but failing. Her words came out choked and trembling.
Karim threw her one of his signature penetrating glances, but only nodded and said nothing. For a moment Alice couldn't lift her eyes from the corpse—there was no blood, and it was laying face-down, so with the white hair spread around it looked very human. Then she caught sight of its right hand, which was twisted up so that the inside of the palm was visible, with the oval shape of the feeding organ clearly standing out against the pallid, nearly translucent skin. This was what they used to sap life force out of human beings. It could be the very same thing that ended the life of young, pretty Jayin who had sung David Bowie just last night. Starman was supposed to be about hope for the future, and faith that whatever awaited in the dark of space, it would prove to be more of a saving grace, and not a threat. Reality was somewhat different. But it didn't need to be. The Wraith were the last of their great enemies. If they could get rid of them, Earth would be safe—or at least, safer than it's ever been since they had opened the Stargate all these years ago.
When Alice looked up, there was a new steel shine in her emerald eyes. She met Karim's, and for the first time, didn't look away but held his gaze for what seemed like an eternity, but was indeed only a couple of seconds before Karim nodded slightly, blinked and shifted his eyes away.
"Let's go," Alice ordered, her voice steady and calm now. "We should head west, see if we can track down the middle one."
Karim nodded again, turned around and started walking in his eerily quiet step. Alice lingered over the body for just a few more seconds, now viewing it with silent fury. She had always wanted to do well, and ever since her first glimpse of Atlantis, she felt determined to prove worthy of the Ancient legacy that rested on the city's new inhabitants' shoulders, but she now found a new, deeper motivation, and it was a sinister one. She had been angry before, of course, but this was different. This cold hatred was not something that could be easily lifted or cured, she felt; it would fester and rot in her until it was satisfied—but how, she did not know. She wondered vaguely if this was how the others felt, and if this was the reason they were so eager to go back here to Pegasus. She doubted they would tell, and she didn't intend to speak about it to anyone either, but it made her feel like she finally belonged.
She looked up and saw that Karim was already a good twenty yards ahead, but he stopped and turned around to look at her. She started walking towards him, making three times as much noise as he did, but froze after only a few paces. She didn't know if she saw the movement, or maybe it was pure instinct, but suddenly she was sure there was something behind the sergeant. She started lifting her gun, her finger moving the selector to A—fully automatic fire. Karim's eyes flickered to her hands, then back to her face and he began turning around when a shadow leaped from the oversized shrub behind him and tackled the Brit to the ground. The fight that ensued was so quick and violent that Alice could barely follow it with her eyes. Karim immediately threw his P90 away, the gun too ineffective at such a close range to do him any good. He was on his back, the Wraith pinning him to the ground with his knees and left hand, but Karim had his right in both of his and keeping it firmly away from his chest. Not even a second of the quiet struggle passed before he bucked and threw the larger assailant off of him with one big effort. He got to his feet and suddenly he had his Beretta in hand, but the Wraith jumped onto him again, putting his long, sharp nails to good use, scratching at the Brit's arm, drawing blood. They were again locked in a close fight, each trying to dodge the other's right hand—Karim to avoid being fed upon, and the Wraith to avoid a bullet. The sergeant got off a shot, but it went high. The Wraith twisted his arm and knocked the gun out of his hand. Now unarmed, Karim went for it with a vengeance, throwing punches so quickly that the Wraith could barely parry them, but parry he did. The whole thing lasted maybe five or seven seconds before Alice could get the Wraith in her sights for long enough to pull the trigger. The shot rang off loudly in her ears. The bullet found its mark. The Wraith threw his arms up convulsively, taking a step back, exposing himself from behind Karim. There was a hole in his face right between the eyes. That surely had to kill him—but Alice aimed again and put three more bullets into his head, just to be on the safe side. He fell down on the ground with a loud thump.
For a moment no other sound could be heard, no rustle of leaves in the treetops, no snap of branches under hoof or paw, only Alice's and Karim's quick, shallow breaths. The Brit still had his back to her, looking down at his fallen enemy. Then he turned around slowly to face Alice. She lowered her gun and their eyes met again, his nearly black ones boring into her bright green.
"Nice shot," he said gravely, his voice infuriatingly calm. Was he never thrown or upset or just plain surprised?
Alice shook her head. "Very close range. T'would be hard to miss." Of course it wasn't entirely true; to hit a fast-moving target required some skill, especially when there was a risk to hit an ally. But Alice had earned her Expert Marksmanship ribbon fair and square, and so her own standards were much higher than normal.
"Nevertheless. Thank you." He was still staring at her in his penetrating way, but this time it didn't make her uncomfortable. Her heart was still beating very hard, but hear breath was already slowing. She knew what would come next: exhaustion and the feeling of emptiness, which always followed great bursts of adrenaline. For now, there was a sense of achievement and satisfaction of a job well done. She was even with Karim. She wasn't going to tell him, of course—but she had felt that she should have gotten that first Wraith herself, too. That he had to do it was on her—and now that she got the other one, they were square. No loose ends, and no debt to pay.
This time it was her turn to break eye-contact. She looked down on his right arm; his jacket's sleeve was in tatters, and soaking up blood.
"You're injured," she pointed out and walked the fifteen yards towards him while he picked up his Beretta and the P90 he had discarded. "Let me look at it."
He shook his head. "It's just a scratch."
"Could be infected," she cautioned. "We don't know what's on that creature's nails."
He yielded and let her look at his arm. She took out a knife and cut off the sleeve above his bicep. Three deep gashes went down from just below his shoulder to the elbow, oozing blood. Alice examined them closely, touching and twisting Karim's arm a little, to see inside the wounds. It didn't look like a mere scratch, but she thought—or more hoped, really—that nothing vital was cut. Before she lifted her hand from his arm, she noted how firm were his muscles. He wasn't tall or bulky like Jake, but there was not an ounce of weakness in him, too. Hard as steel. And equally cold, she thought, stepping back and pulling the first-aid kit from her vest. Running around with all this equipment was a pain, but she admitted it did come in handy. She'd never complain about it again.
The radio in her ear came on, just a faint echo of static announcing that someone was on their frequency.
"Boyd, report," the voice of Commandant Perrault came in with a slight distortion.
Alice touched her earpiece with her unoccupied hand. "This is Boyd, sir. We've found our Wraith and then stumbled upon another. Possibly he heard the shots and came towards us. Both are neutralized."
"Good, we got ours as well. Let's fall back to the Jumper and we'll see how to proceed from there."
"Yes, sir."
Alice touched the earpiece again to turn off the mike and focused on getting Karim the first aid he needed. He didn't even flinch as she applied the disinfectant judiciously over the open wounds and then wrapped them in bandages tightly. The man was a machine.
"Thanks," he said as she stepped back again, her hands now red with his blood. He offered her a napkin from his vest pocket and she wiped them on it. She smiled to him—an automatic response, she often employed smiles instead of words; but to her surprise Karim—the unpredictable man that he was—replied with a small and tight-lipped smile of his own. She was so bewildered that it took her a few seconds to realize she was staring rudely at him. She shifted her gaze away, trying to suppress a smirk.
"Let's move out."