The wormhole coalesced and thundered into shimmering solidity, the flash of the city’s iris field hazing over the Stargate a split-second later.
The technician looked up from his console. “I have Colonel Sheppard’s IDC, ma’am.”
Carter leaned over him and spoke into the radio. “Colonel? You’re early.”
If Sam suspected that something was amiss, then the tone of John Sheppard’s voice over the open channel confirmed it for her immediately. “More like too late, Colonel. We got a situation here.”
Zelenka gave her a worried look as he came closer. “Is everyone all right?”
“Teyla and Ronon are M-I-A. We think they’ve been kidnapped.”
Her lips thinned. “By the locals?”
Sheppard paused before answering. “Not exactly. It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“It usually is…” murmured Radek.
Carter spoke quickly to the technician. “Major Lorne and his team are on standby alert, get them up here, double-time.” Off his nod, Sam keyed the radio again. “Tell me what you can, Colonel.”
She could almost hear him frowning. In a lot of ways, Sheppard reminded her of Jack O’Neill; both men had their own casual, unconventional ways of command, both inspired loyalty and respect among their people, and both officers took the safety of their team personally. His voice was laced with frustration and annoyance as he gave a terse report on the situation on M9K-153. Carter listened with growing concern as Sheppard laid out his impressions of the locals, these Heruuni, and their stories of a mysterious guardian force, of ritualized abductions.
By the time he was done she had dozens of questions pressing at the front of her thoughts, but she held them back. “What’s your evaluation, John?” she asked, giving Major Lorne a glance as the officer came up the stairs in full battle gear, ready for deployment.
“Takkol and his elders aren’t going to give us any help,” said Sheppard. “And every second we waste, the trail goes colder. If we’re going to find Teyla and Ronon, we need to do it ourselves.”
Lorne’s eyes narrowed as he caught the last of Sheppard’s words. Carter knew without having to ask that the major would understand what was expected of him. “I concur,” she said to the radio. “I’m sending a support team through the gate now. Sweep the area and report back as soon as you have anything.”
“Roger that,” Sheppard replied. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Should we take a Puddle Jumper?” Lorne asked.
Sam shook her head. “Let’s hold off on that option for a moment. If we come through with too much firepower, there’s no telling how the locals —”
“Or this Aegis…” broke in Zelenka.
“…Will react,” Carter concluded. “You have a go, Major.”
Lorne saluted and rejoined his men, snapping out orders as he went.
Zelenka pushed his glasses back along his nose with a finger and frowned again. “Colonel Carter… Do you think an aggressive posture is the best one?”
“One squad of men isn’t aggressive, Radek,” she replied. “It’s prudent. If you have a better suggestion, I’d be happy to hear it.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.” But she could read the unspoken addendum in his eyes; he’s wondering how Elizabeth Weir would have dealt with this.
Sam’s civilian predecessor cast a long shadow over Atlantis; the woman had guided this place with intelligence and compassion through that difficult and lonely first year, and then for two more, facing challenges from all sides. And while Weir had never been one to shy away from making the hard calls, Carter still felt, even after weeks in that office, that there were some of the non-military staff who saw her as less a scientist and more a soldier. In truth, she was both, and Sam would have been hard-pressed to chose between which calling meant the most to her. Not for the first time, Carter wished she’d had more of a chance to get to know Elizabeth before the woman had been lost to them, if only for any advice she might have shared.
From below, the gate murmured as Lorne’s unit stepped into the ripples, and for a long moment Sam felt a tingle in the base of her feet; she was almost rocking on her heels, drawn by the glow of the open conduit. I want to go with them.
Outwardly, she was impassive, but inside Sam tried to push the thought away without success. It felt odd to stand here and send her people through the Stargate on mission after mission, to stand here and watch and wonder what they would be confronted with. Carter was no stranger to the burdens of command, but her duties had always taken her out there. Atlantis was the first time she found herself with the responsibility of staying behind, and with each passing day in that role she had new respect for Hammond, O’Neill and Landry, her former commanders; officers who had done what she did now, sending men and women into the unknown, silently hoping that each order they gave would be the right one.
Lorne was the last to step to the gate, and he paused on the threshold, glancing up at her. He gave a curt nod, and Carter returned it.
“Bring our people home, Major,” she told him.
“You can count on it, Colonel,” he replied, and vanished though the event horizon.
In the blood-warm darkness of the craft, the air was close and heavy with the sharp scent of sweat. Each footfall was light and difficult, the gravity generators beneath the bone plates of the deck working at their lowest setting, just like every other primary system aboard the ship. The vessel’s commander moved up to the cockpit using handholds formed from ropey sinew, placing each step with care. If he had stopped and listened carefully, he would have heard the labored rasp from the atmosphere processor’s lungs. They were working the craft hard, beyond its normal capacities and durations.
The gloomy interior of the ship took in light from a viewing slit across the bow and the pale blue-white glow of two monitor lenses; these screens were the only ones in active mode.
Two of the six other crewmembers stood at their stations; one, a drone, impassive and motionless, the other, a worker, hunched over a chiming console. The latter looked up at him as he entered the broad cockpit.
“There has been a change?” he asked, absently smoothing the front of his combat tunic.
The worker — a member of the scientist caste — nodded, his pale face shining in the screen-light. “A detection from the planet’s surface. Another activation of the portal. More new arrivals.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.
“Show me,” demanded the commander.
“See here,” said the scientist, working the console. “The energy release plume corresponds with the formation of another wormhole. And these lesser peaks?” He traced a long-nailed hand over a digital mountainside of readout spikes. “Transit outputs. Several humans left the portal only moments ago.”
He considered this for a moment, playing with a tuft of white, wiry hair on his chin. “More humans. Off-worlders.”
“Likely,” said the scientist. “Should we… Intervene?”
The commander glanced out of the viewing slit. Faint color from Heruun’s yellow-orange sun reached them through the mass of dust that was the planet’s ring system; hidden in the shadow of it, drifting over the night side, they were virtually invisible. “And how could we do that?”
The scientist licked his pallid lips. “Perhaps, if we tried a gravity descent —”
He turned and glared at the scientist. “Why do you whisper?”