"Wait!" Miko, holding tightly to Zelenka's arm to keep him standing, was studying the detector. "Life signs, eight of them, fifteen yards that direction." She jabbed the detector toward the door for emphasis.
From behind them, something slammed into the outer hatch with a muted thunk. Rodney flung up his arm helplessly. "Eight versus, what, sixty or seventy? I vote for eight."
John said, "Here we go," and hit the panel. He ducked under the door as it started to slide up, Teyla and Ronon right behind him.
It was another big room, softly lit. In the center there were eight people gathered around a console, watching a holographic display of the Mirror platform. They scattered back at the sudden intrusion, some of them crying out in alarm. No, John corrected himself, seeing the dead white skin, the long silver hair, not people. They were Wraith or Eidolon, whatever they called themselves. All males, but some were smaller, slight enough to be teenagers. Instead of the black and silver the Wraith always wore, their clothes had colors, shades of dark red, purple, blue. They were unarmed, and John made a split-second decision. He snapped, "Hold your fire."
Ronon growled. He didn't lower his weapon, but he didn't shoot. The hatch was sliding shut behind them and Rodney was already pulling the crystals. There was another door on the far side of the room, sealed.
Beside John, studying the Eidolon with narrowed eyes, Teyla said, "They are like Trishen, I can't sense them."
The Eidolon were staring in astonished horror, exactly like… exactly like a bunch of bloody desperate armedto-the-teeth aliens had just burst into the room. In utter astonishment, one of them said, "What are they?"
John raised his voice, saying harshly, "Just stay back, don't try to stop us, and nobody'll get hurt."
Behind him, Rodney said, "You sound like a bank robber."
John drew breath to tell him to hurry the hell up. Then a muted blast sent Rodney staggering back from the door.
John caught his arm as he reeled, hauling him away from the shattered hatch as Teyla turned to cover them. They didn't have time to run; they barely made it to the side wall, taking cover behind some metal crates. Ronon shoved Miko and Zelenka down behind him, just as armored drones swarmed into the room.
Some headed straight for them, others for the Eidolon. John opened fire, dropping three before one reached the first Eidolon. Too shocked to run away, the Eidolon just stared in horror as the drone grabbed him by the throat. The drone didn't hesitate at all, slamming a hand into the Eidolon's chest before a shot from Ronon's energy gun blasted it. Rodney recovered enough to lift his P-90, firing through the hatch with Teyla. Drone bodies were piling up out there, but more stunner fire struck the crates, the walls behind them.
John reached into his vest for a fragmentation grenade, but just then one of the older Eidolon rushed toward the hatch, slamming some device onto the wall beside it. A drone grabbed him, pinning him next to it and slamming a hand into his chest to feed. John fired a burst into its back, but the creature was oblivious to the bullets striking its body, to anything but its prey. The device lit up, then light rippled across the hatchway. The drones on the other side trying to push through the opening slammed into the light, staggering back as if they had hit a solid wall. Force shield, John thought, concentrating his fire on the drones still in the room. It was a portable force shield, like the one Trishen had used in her ship to hold them prisoner.
The remaining drones in the room finally fell, Ronon dropping the last one with a shot to the chest.
Teyla shook her head, sitting back with a gasp of relief. "I cannot believe we are still alive."
"When did you become a pessimist?" John stood, scanning the fallen drones cautiously.
"About five minutes ago," Teyla said grimly.
John didn't see any blinking self-destruct things on the drones' armor. Maybe they had been so distracted by the close proximity of dinner that they hadn't thought to activate them. Or they had been told not to, because the Wraith wanted at least a couple of humans alive to question.
Ronon stepped out from around the crates, looking over the fallen drones, shooting one that wasn't quite dead enough. John said, "Ronon, watch the other door." He gave Teyla a nod, and she shifted to cover the Eidolon now. Three of them were down, one stunned and two fed on, and the others were still huddled on the opposite side of the room.
John twisted around to check the rest of his team, gritting his teeth as his injured ribs protested the motion. Miko and Radek, crouched back against the wall, looked shell-shocked and sick. Rodney, more used to certain death, didn't look so good either. John asked, "Everybody okay?"
"Oh, we're fine," Rodney said, making a helpless gesture and rubbing his forehead. "Kusanagi, life signs? How surrounded are we?"
"Just us." Miko checked the detector, then jerked her chin toward the drones clustered outside the hatch. "And them. Nothing behind us, or to either side."
John thought, breathing room, that would be nice. He said, "Rodney, any chance the consoles in this room are what we need?"
"Oh, probably not." Not looking optimistic, Rodney turned to Zelenka. "Can you help or do you just want to sit there and nurse your concussion?"
Zelenka glared up at him from under his bloody bandage. "I'm fine, give me your hand, prdelaty bastard."
John circled around the crates, heading warily toward the force shield-sealed hatch, the P-90 ready. The drones on the other side stirred, straining against the field as John came near it, the faceless masks all turned toward him. He felt a chill walk down his spine; they were starving and he was a walking steak. But the field seemed to be holding.
He backed away, then twitched at nearby movement, jerking up the P-90. The Eidolon who had activated the force shield lay sprawled next to the dead drone that had fed on him; his eyes were still open, aware, and he was breathing in harsh gasps. It was harder to tell than with a human, but John could see the withered texture of the blue-tinged skin, the shrunken flesh around face and neck. It-He had sacrificed himself for the other Eidolon trapped in the room. Wraith just didn't do that.
"May I go to him?" a voice said.
John turned to see one of the Eidolon who had taken cover by the far wall, cautiously getting to his feet. He had spoken to Teyla and was pointing to the withered being at John's feet.
Teyla looked at John, brow lifted. He nodded, and she told the Eidolon, "You may."
John backed away, out of arm's reach, as the Eidolon moved past him. It was one of the young ones, smaller than a mature Wraith, with more human features. Its voice hadn't been as deep, either. It threw him a frightened look, then went to kneel by the dying Eidolon.
Yeah, that was pretty much our fault, John thought. He mentally pushed that aside to deal with later and crossed back to the control area, asking, "What's the word, Rodney?"
Rodney shook his head, looking distinctly unhappy as he scrolled through the holographic display. Zelenka was leaning heavily on one of the consoles, his expression suggesting he was about to be sick. Miko was balancing the life signs detector and a tablet, holding it so Rodney could see it. Rodney said, "This is only monitoring equipment for the platform, I can't get good readings for the accretion surface with this, just the minor discharges it's still throwing off."
"Okay." John bit his lip, looking at the consoles. "That wasn't what I wanted to hear."
Rodney glared at him. "Yes, well, imagine how I feel." He took a sharp breath, threw a glance at the Eidolon still backed against the wall, watching fearfully. He lowered his voice. "There was monitoring equipment for the accretion surface in the pulse control room up on the roof. If that still exists in this reality, I should be able to see if the connection is stable enough to transport us back. If so, then we can try to steal a ship and make it through before the Wraith blow us up. And I know I'm simplifying it, but that's our best bet. Actually, it may be our only bet, unless we want to make a break for the mountains, learn to grow crops, and hide out for the rest of our lives on this moon.