"On it," came the reply.
"How long do you think it would take them to make the journey?"
Zelenka licked his lips. "That all depends on the energy flux curve they've been operating on during this voyage. You see, if it's a high co-efficient, then there could be a ten to twenty percent variation in the muon-"
"A ballpark figure, Radek," she broke in. "I don't need the decimal places."
"Oh. Of course. Ball-park." He hesitated, considering. "Thirty, perhaps thirty-five hours."
Weir studied the screen. "Is there nothing they could do to shave some time off that?"
Zelenka shook his head. "Even if they run the drives hot, it still wouldn't make more than a couple of hours difference. Hyperspace travel doesn't work like conventional rockets. It is all gravity curvatures and boson intersections." He gave her a weak grin. "As a famous engineer once said, `you cannot change the laws of physics."'
"A famous engineer?"
"Yes. I believe he was from Moscow."
"Dr. Weir?" The technician called out. "I have Daedalus on the comm."
She tapped her headset. "Colonel Caldwell?"
The voice of the starship's commander crackled from a hidden speaker. "Doctor. You're lucky you caught us. We've been conducting experiments on the edge of a Jovian planet's atmosphere, using the hydrogen ram scoop array developed by Colonel Carter"
Even though she couldn't see him, Weir held up her hand for quiet. "Colonel, as much as I would usually be fascinated by such an interesting scientific endeavor, I'm afraid I have to ask you to cut it short. We have a situation in the Halcyon system, a few parsecs from your current location." She entered a data string on her computer. "I'm sending you galactic co-ordinates for the system on a side channel, along with everything we have up until now on the mission there."
"Let me guess," Caldwell said dryly. "Sheppard 's team is in trouble?"
"For starters."
At another time, Caldwell might have argued the matter with her or made an issue of Sheppard's involvement; but the professional relationship between Weir and the captain of the Daedalus had now grown to the point where each had a level of respect for the other, and to Caldwell's credit he accepted her orders without question. "Tell inc what I need to know, Doctor, and we'll be on our way."
"There's a good possibility that the planet Halcyon is under imminent threat of Wraith attack, and right now our people can't Gate off world. You are to proceed to Halcyon at full military speed and offer all assistance needed to Colonel Sheppard and his team… And be prepared to engage the Wraith in force when you get there."
She heard Caldwell take a deep breath. "All right. Daedalus concurs." After a moment, the colonel spoke again, quietly so that only Weir could hear him. "Elizabeth, that planet's a day and a half away even at full throttle. If the Wraith are heading there, we may already be too late."
"I know, Colonel," she admitted. "Good hunting, Daedalus. Atlantis out."
Chapter Nine
The cavern was dank and smelled faintly of rotting meat. No human hunter had ever dared to venture this deep into the core of the enclosure; or at least if they did, they never returned to speak of it.
The Wraith that the Halcyons had christened `Scar' toyed with some of the items his pack mates had stripped from the prey, picking them up and sniffing them, moving them about with a clawed finger. Presently, he gathered up a pistol made of black steel and turned it in his hand. The weapon was interesting. Scar recognized the shape and form of a primitive ballistic firearm, but at the same time he could see that this was far more advanced than the guns carried by the hunters they usually culled. He licked the frame, tasting sweat and the smallest remnants of flesh-scent there. Scar had always been fascinated by the machinery of lesser species, the way that they forced metals from the ground into hard shapes instead of fashioning organics, bone and bio-matter as the Wraith did. It was a peculiarity of his, an affectation his kindred rarely shared.
One of the pack spat angrily as it came upon something in the pile, and Scar snatched it from his grip. The Wraith growled; the device was a small screen with buttons about its frame, made from some sort of crystalline material that glowed with an inner light. Scar knew the origin of it immediately. The old enemy, his kind's most ancient foe, had fabricated this. With a sudden jerk of motion, the Wraith threw the device into the air and fired the human weapon at it. Sharp retorts of sound echoed around the cave with yellow flashes of discharge from the barrel. The pack snarled at the noise, but Scar grinned widely as the Ancient scanner struck the rock in a rain of broken fragments.
The gunfire jerked Teyla from her painful slumber and she twitched against gooey bonds that held her hands behind her back. The Athosian blinked and tried to make sense of where she was, remembering the trapdoor and the black pit beneath it. She looked around. A cave. No way to know how much time has passed. She caught sight of Bishop, similarly secured a few feet away. He was wavering on the edge of alertness, his head lolling. Teyla tried to work her wrists free, but she had no success. The thick, gelatinous matter that ensnared them was some kind of secreted web, pliant but impossible to break.
Then she shivered, and not through the cold. In her head there were growls and snarls, a wild animal chorus of base, bloodhungry minds. She saw the Wraith, clustered around each other, and before them the single male in ragged clothes with her handgun in his fist. The alien's garb was similar to the coats and battle gear she had seen before on other high-ranking Wraith, but it was ripped and torn, ravaged by combat and years of life as a fugitive. He came closer to her, and in the dimness Teyla saw his scarred and ruined cheek, his single blinded eye.
"What," husked the alien, working at the word. "What are. You?" He spoke haltingly, as if he had not had to form proper speech in a long time and the manner of it had become unfamiliar to him. "What are you?" repeated Scar. "Not the hunters. Not… Not the Enemy. You have their machines… But you are not one of them."
Once, when she was a girl, Teyla had seen her father put a whitehorn to death because it had escaped from the corral and gorged itself on poisonous fruit. In the moments before he had put the animal out of its misery, it had looked directly at her and the Athosian had seen the light of bestial madness in its gaze. She saw the same thing now on the face of the Wraith that confronted her.
Teyla marshaled her resolve and stared him in the eye, refusing to give the Wraith anything. Scar brandished the Beretta pistol under her nose, and she flinched from the stink of hot cordite. "You… Are different from that male." He jerked his head at Bishop, and she could feel him in her thoughts again, the same black slick of consciousness that had caressed her psyche out in the forest. "You are touched by us." Scar rocked back on his haunches and made a clicking noise in his throat, what must have been the Wraith equivalent of a chuckle. "How lucky you are."
She couldn't stop herself. Teyla pulled hard against her bonds, slamming forward a few inches before the sticky ropes went tight and reined her in. Still, she took a little reward in the momentary recoil on the Wraith's face. Scar sneered and composed himself. "I know you. Sensed you." She felt him pushing at her mind and fought to hold him out; fought and failed.
"Tey-lah," said Scar, drawing the word from her. He sounded out the syllables of her name, savoring the resonance of them. "You are far from home, prey." Hate washed over her from him, thick and oily, cold as the kiss of space itself. She gagged.
"Why don' you pick a fight with a bloke, bozo?" Bishop said thickly. "Ought to get yourself a new haircut while you're at it. Th' metal band look went out with Bon Jovi."