"I'm relieved you didn't assume malicious intent on our part." Elizabeth let her focus drift toward a splintered window frame and the area beyond it. "The gate's inaccessible, you said?"
"I'm afraid so. I'd like to offer you a place in my army's command post, just on the other side of the woods. You will need protection for the night."
So much for not taking sides. They had no other viable options, though. Grateful for the invitation, Elizabeth nonetheless needed to hear the inevitable confirmed. "And when morning comes?"
There was a bleak, resigned ache in the governor's voice. "Then the conflict which has been expected for generations will finally arrive, and may the Ancestors help us all."
Chapter fourteen
Radek's first view of P7L-418 came at twilight, as Jumper One emerged from the Nistra gate. Had the landscape not been marred by the wreckage of the station segment, he might have thought it pretty, in an austere sort of way. Of course, amid those picturesque mountains lay enough adarite to make him forget his own name, so he wasn't disappointed to watch them grow smaller outside the jumper's windscreen.
Their ascent into planetary orbit took them over both Nistra and Falnori territory, giving them an overhead view of the continent for the first time. A scattering of small lakes demonstrated where the Falnori got the water to irrigate their crops; clusters of rugged stone dwellings set snugly into the foothills must have been the Nistra villages. In between lay a sort of no-man's land of rolling plains and woods. Radek spotted the planet's main gate amid that patchwork and squinted, trying vainly to identify the small figures standing nearby.
"Check that out." Colonel Sheppard put the jumper into a shallow bank, allowing them a better look at the area. Tiny pinpricks of light, dozens of them, were gathered together under the encroaching darkness.
"They're closer to Nistra territory, though not by much." Rodney frowned, not comprehending. "Another settlement?"
"Don't think so." Sheppard called up the HUD. Apparently they'd now gained enough distance from the adarite deposits in the mountains for the sensors to work properly. "Lots of life signs, but no structures. It's a troop encampment. They're stopping for the night."
"From there they'll be able to march to the gate hill by mid-morning." Rodney sat hunched over in the right seat, his elbows resting on the console. "Is there another group out there on the Falnori side?"
In answer, Sheppard ran a sensor sweep to the south. "Sure enough," he confirmed. "Their group's smaller. They'll probably be better fighters, though, since their brains aren't scrambled."
Rodney sighed. "Well, that's a warm, fuzzy feeling. These people are determined to fight no matter what."
Radek spoke up from his seat behind them. "Then we should work quickly, I believe."
As Jumper One continued to climb, the lanterns and campfires that dotted the ground shrank into nothingness, soon replaced by starlight from above. Before long, the proximity alarm flashed, surprising no one. "That would be the space junk we've heard so much about." The Colonel shut off the alarm and engaged the jumper's shield. "Hold onto something, all right? If I have to make some sudden moves and the inertial dampeners can't quite keep up, I'd rather not have to peel anybody off the bulkheads."
"Another wonderful thought." Rodney watched with an expression of obvious trepidation at what lay ahead of them.
The jumper approached the labyrinth of wreckage. Radek found the view bizarrely fascinating. A derelict fighter was suspended in a bizarre pas de deux with a Wraith Dart, the two craft passing each other so slowly that the motion was almost imperceptible. Farther away, a larger ship floated in an orbit that would have looked perfectly normal if not for the great gash that had torn the ship open from bow to stern.
"Heads up," called Sheppard, abruptly dropping the jumper's nose as a piece of unidentifiable metal sailed past. It continued on its path until impacting another Dart, altering the course of both objects.
Radek shook his head, amazed. In a way, it looked almost as if the battle of so many centuries ago had never ended.
"So the black box specified an orbit for the station, right?" Sheppard verified. "You're not just guessing at a distance above the planet?"
"We recovered a specific orbital height from the emergency procedures, yes." Although Rodney's reply sounded calm and characteristically pedantic, his fingers were wrapped tightly around the armrests. "Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, everything up here is quite effectively demonstrating Newton's laws of motion. Any of this junk could have gotten knocked into the station segment and affected its position sometime in the last ten thousand years. Just get us into orbit and I'll find it on the sensors."
More than once Radek had had cause to appreciate the Ancients' style of computer design. Their technology was highly compatible; it nearly always recognized its own. As long as there was at least a minimal level of power left in the station, it would emit a signal that would light up on the jumper's sensors.
The Colonel navigated smoothly through an array of Darts. Radek had never quite gotten used to seeing things tilt outside the jumper without feeling an associated physiological shift.
"This is a damned minefield," Rodney muttered, ducking his head to study the sensor screen.
"Relax, Rodney," Sheppard advised. "I'd rather fly through this than dodge rocket-propelled grenades. And, unlike any of my rides on Earth, the jumper has a shield."
"Up until we have to dock with the station, sure. At that point, we'll have to shut the shield down, and the whole contraption will be little more than a glorified tin can."
"Let's wait and worry about that if and when we have to, all right?"
As it happened, they didn't have to wait long before Rodney's concern moved from the theoretical to the practical. "Got something," he reported. "Turn right thirty degrees."
Sheppard complied, bringing into view an industriallooking construct in an orbit slightly higher than the jumper's. "I take it that's what we're looking for?"
"That's it."
The station, thankfully, appeared to have sustained little damage in the millennia following the battle. There were some dents, and one side bore the telltale scorch marks left by a laser cannon, but the jumper dock was unharmed. God only knew how, since there were plenty of stray engine pods and bits of Dart nacelles drifting nearby.
Radek pretended not to notice the Wraith cruiser looming behind the station. Lifeless or not, it was an unsettling sight.
"May I suggest leaving the shield in place until the last possible moment?" asked Rodney, eying the debris surrounding them.
"Can do." Sheppard turned the jumper cleanly and used the HUD to keep track of their alignment. When only inches separated the back hatch from the dock, he slid his hand across the control panel, and the shield blinked out of existence. A not-quite-gentle thud reverberated through the craft, followed by the whisper of an airlock sealing shut. The Colonel twisted in his seat to face his passengers. "Over to you, guys."
Radek leaned over to examine the screen that reported outside conditions. "The interior of the station is not pressurized," he read. "We will have to wear the suits."
One corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked upward. "Stylin'."
Half an hour, four bruised shins, and two dozen multilingual curses later, the trio was sufficiently outfitted. Spacious though the jumper's interior was, it had not been designed to accommodate the expedition's bulky spacesuits-or the clumsy flailing of three people attempting to climb into said suits.
"Maybe the Ancients had a more compact version," theorized Rodney, huffing a little as he tightened the seal around his boot.
Sheppard reached toward his earpiece and made an irritated noise when he inadvertently smacked his glove against his helmet. "The less time we have to spend in these, the better. Let's move out."