“Really?”
“Yes sir.” The man’s gaze dipped slightly. “And to check for power drains.”
That wasn’t on the repair schedule, but Ellis decided to let it slide for the moment. People needed their own reassurances after something like this. “Okay, Copper. Carry on.”
Copper nodded, then looked past him, along the corridor. “This is where he was?”
“Who?”
“Major Deacon.”
“No, airman.” Ellis shook his head. “That thing wasn’t Deacon. Part of it looked like him, but believe me, that was just a scam.”
“So there was no way we could have…” The man trailed off, helplessly.
“Could have what? Saved him? No, not a chance. Like I said, Copper, he wasn’t even here.” Ellis slapped Copper’s shoulder. “Report back to me once you’ve checked things out. The more I know about this corridor the easier I’ll sleep.”
“You and me both, sir.”
Ellis walked away, left Copper opening up his tool case. He had brushed off the man’s notion of saving Deacon, but in truth it was a thought that had plagued him, too. It was foolish; he knew that logically, from what he had seen and from what Carter had told him about the situation in Atlantis, Deacon never stood a chance.
The Ancient’s ship — or rather, the part of the hybrid that had disguised itself as a ship — had left a section of itself behind when the puddle jumpers had lifted it free. Some fifty kilos of something half nanite, half tissue had crawled away into the dark spaces of the ship, found a place to hide and proceeded to send its rootlets into the power and control cabling than ran along corridor nine. It had sent false images to the test equipment used to hunt down the power drains it caused; the engineering crews had probably walked back and forth over it a dozen times.
It was good at hiding. It had even jammed Apollo’s communications, back when it had first appeared as the Ancient and his starhopper. Ellis had thought the Replicator vessel had done that, but of course it was the hybrid. It couldn’t have risked the Asurans telling Ellis what they were pursuing.
Only later, when it was strong enough, had it emerged from its lair and attacked Kyle Deacon.
The helmsman’s death, while not entirely painless, would have been swift. The hybrid was a predator, not a sadist. Down there under the floor panels it had taken Deacon apart and built itself among his ruins. Nothing of the man had survived. Only his tissues, copied and incubated to increase the hybrid’s mass, had remained. And only a tattered image of him had fallen away into the jovian.
If there was some measure of comfort in that, however small, Ellis was prepared to take it.
As he reached the stairs, his headset chimed. “Sharpe here, sir. We’re almost at the target point.”
“I’ll be right up. Tell Meyers to go weapons hot.”
Apollo broke out of hyperspace as Ellis reached the bridge. By the time he was in the command throne the ship was in stable orbit around Chunky Monkey.
Despite the whimsical name Colonel Sheppard had given it, the planet was as unlovely as he had described, sludge-gray and pocked like a rotted melon. No complex life existed there, which made Ellis’ job a lot easier. As it was, he would have no compunction about boiling a few square kilometers of that greasy globe.
It would probably be an improvement. “Meyers, have you got the target co-ordinates?”
“Yes sir. Locked in and ready to fire on your command…” She paused, then straightened in her seat. “Hold on.”
Ellis sat forward. Something was badly wrong. “Talk to me, Meyers.”
“Hyperspace signature,” she said quickly. “Something’s jumping in.”
“Shields up, max power.” Ellis stood and walked towards the viewport. He could see a star where no star should be, a point that suddenly erupted into a billowing cloud of azure light and a flood of elemental particles.
A hundred kilometers from Apollo’s prow, the angular bulk of a Replicator warship slid into view.
“Crap,” snarled Ellis. “If it’s not one thing it’s the goddamn other…”
The ship was big; he didn’t need sensors to tell him that. A battleship, twice the size of Apollo or more, black as night and bristling with gun ports. It slowed, decelerating smoothly from the hyperspace emission, and then swung about to face Apollo. Ellis watched its silhouette shrink into a looming cross-section.
The Asuran was hard to see. For all its bulk its surface seemed to suck light in. Only the endless rows of lit viewports along its flanks gave it away.
“They’ve charged their weapons, sir. Shields are maxed out too…” Meyers paused. “Colonel? It looks like they’re locked onto the same co-ordinates we are.”
“What the hell?”
Sharpe looked up from her console. “Comms request coming in, Colonel.”
“Firewalls up, then put it on screen.” Ellis strode back to stand next to her, looking down at the comms panel on her board.
It flickered, then lit up. From the Asuran ship, a Replicator glared back at Abe Ellis with a look of cold contempt and waspish intelligence.
The Asuran’s face was familiar — older than the norm, the hair receding and closely cropped, the eyes deep-set, the mouth a grim line. Ellis had seen it on file more than once.
“Oberoth,” he said quietly.
“Indeed,” the Replicator replied. “And you are Colonel Abraham Ellis.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. To us, one target is very much like another.”
Ellis glanced back at the ship. The fact that it wasn’t already spitting fire in his direction gave him a small measure of hope.
He turned his attention back to the screen. “On the subject of targets, I notice that your weapons are locked onto the planet.”
“As are yours.”
“Which leads me to believe our missions may not be entirely incompatible.”
Oberoth was silent for a moment. He looked like he was weighing the situation up.
“Look,” Ellis continued. “We know what’s down there. We had a little taste of it after it got away from you, but we managed to finish the job.” He nodded down towards the planet. “We’re just here to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The Asuran raised an eyebrow, very slightly. “And we,” he replied, “are here to make sure it never happened at all.”
“In which case, how about we both just prosecute our respective missions and then go home?”
There was a pause, and then Oberoth smiled. It was a chilling sight.
“A logical suggestion. Perhaps there is hope for you yet.”
The screen went dark. Ellis straightened up and let out a long breath. “Meyers, have they changed status?”
“No sir. All their active weapons are still aimed at the facility.”
“Good. Target that base and open fire.”
As he spoke, streams of energy lapped from the Replicator ship, a concentrated broadside that lanced down at the surface of the planet with unimaginable ferocity. Under it, the rainclouds shrank away, and the ground boiled.
As if in answer, missiles darted up from Apollo’s launch tubes, angled themselves down at the same spot and accelerated into the maelstrom. Ellis saw the planet grow a spot of impossible brightness, like the rising of a minor sun.
It was a brief moment of grudging co-operation, nothing more. But for those few seconds, humans and Asurans brought light to the surface of a dark world.
And when they were finished, they turned their backs to each other once again, and were gone.