Bonewhite did not bow, but his tone was respectful. “Lady.”
Alabaster came forward, laid one hand on his sleeve. “This must be rooted out.”
“Lady, that I know!”
Alabaster showed teeth. “I say this as She Who Speaks for Steelflower. There is a promise to be kept, and we are close to failing her.”
“I know that, too,” Bonewhite said, through clenched teeth. “Hasten! You say the engines are solid? Well, here's your chance to prove it. Open a hyperspace window for me, and I'll bring us through to Atlantis.”
“Madness!” Ease said. “We cannot jump so close to a sun, the fields won't stand it.”
Bonewhite looked at Hasten. “Well?”
“It's a risk,” the engineer answered. “The deeper one falls into a gravity well, the greater the chance that the ship will break apart. But I believe we can stand it.”
“And I will lay the course myself,” Bonewhite said. His tone dared anyone to object. “Now.”
The duty pilot ducked hastily away from this state, and after a moment Ease backed away as well.
“On your head be it, to kill the daughter of the Commander.”
Bonewhite bared teeth in a sudden grin. “And if I fail, what does it matter? We'll all be dead.”
Alabaster smiled. “You are confident, Hivemaster.”
“I am, Lady.” This time he did bow.
“Then begin.” Alabaster leaned against the commander's station, tall and lithe and vital. Ember allowed himself one long look, drinking in her courage, and turned his attention back to his console, attending with half his mind while Bonewhite and Ease and Hasten contacted the rest of the fleet, Ease raising his voice to shout down any opposition. Ember couldn't blame the other commanders, but — there was no other choice, and so they all eventually agreed. Bonewhite studied his calculations a final time, and raised his face to the communications web.
"Take the course from me, or lay your own, but follow me now!"
A jumble of voices answered, affirming their readiness, and Ember braced himself against his console.
“Open the hyperspace window,” Bonewhite ordered, and Just Fortune surged through.
Zelenka said something rude in Czech, staring at his screen, and then shook his head. "Sergeant Ling!"
"I saw it, Doc," the technician on the sensors answered. "It looks like Todd's hive, but they're way out on the fringe of the system."
"Well, what are they doing there?" John demanded. He'd only planned to stop in the control room long enough to touch base with Zelenka, and it looked as though all hell was breaking loose. I've got to stop coming up here, he thought, and came to stand behind Ling.
"How far out?" Zelenka asked, and Ling typed a quick query.
"Seven, maybe ten hours? I don't get it."
"Are you telling me Todd's ships aren't going to get here for seven hours?" John's voice started to rise, and he controlled it hastily. "Crap! What's he playing at?"
"Perhaps there was some kind of problem," Zelenka said. "They are not powering down to normal — maybe they didn't solve their navigation problem correctly?"
"They're opening another hyperspace window," Ling said. "Holy crap —"
The hiveships vanished from the screen, and reappeared a moment later further into the system. Much closer, John thought, maybe an hour or maybe less, almost in orbit. Zelenka swore again.
"I would not like to try that, and I'd rather they didn't do it anywhere near my planet, thank you."
The communications screen chimed at that moment, and a picture formed: another long-haired Wraith male. This one looked vaguely familiar, and John dredged his memory: Kenny, Todd's second-in-command on the ill-fated mission where Teyla had first masqueraded as Steelflower. And now Teyla was on his ship. John didn't know whether that was likely to be good or bad.
"Atlantis." Kenny's voice hissed from the speakers. "We are here as our Queen and Commander have ordered."
"Nice to see you, too," John said. "You may have noticed we have company."
"I see Queen Death's fleet," Kenny answered. "But I do not take my orders from you. We will engage when and if our Commander orders, and not before."
John bit his lip. "Fair enough. And I'm guessing you want to talk to him, too."
Kenny made a sound that might have been laughter. "Indeed we do."
"Absolutely," John said. "Look, just kick back, have a beer or something, and I'll go get him." He made a slashing gesture, and Banks cut the connection. "Get Woolsey and O'Neill on the double.
Guide had been waiting for some time, though he had lost precise track of the time. Not long by Wraith standards, but an unreasonable amount of time by human reckoning, and he filed that knowledge as possibly of use. The Lanteans did not know what to do in the way of courtesy if they could not offer food and drink; there was no place in their ritual for the play of dice or tiles, or the sharp exchange across the stone game. They had left him a carafe and glass as though they could not quite believe he did not require it, and someone had had the wit to dim the lights a fraction, but that was all.
The room had chairs and a long low daybed as well as the table, and Ancient writing coiled across the wall. It was the form of his youth, familiar shapes though he could only read one word in ten — invocations, blessings, perhaps, on the city's peoples? He could not tell. He turned to the long window instead, peered out into the fading evening. A chill radiated from the glass, and he hunched his shoulders inside his heavy coat, careful to keep his feeding hand well away from the cold metal of the frame. An aurora bloomed in the sky, tendrils of light rising like pale flame from the horizon, as thin as smoke, coiling silently behind the towers. He had seen auroras before, on other worlds, but nothing quite like this. He had not seen it when he had been here before — Sheppard had brought him from stasis to the Stargate in haste, there had been no time for gawking. Presumably no one else had seen it either, at least not before the Lanteans were forced to land here, but he could not shake the sense of unease.
The lights brightened, the colors stronger, whips and veils of green and blue scourging the skies. Once before we slept…. The words of a children's story, long forgotten, flashed through his mind. Once before we slept there was a world where the skies streamed with fire, and the First Mothers turned their back on it and fled. He couldn't remember the rest of it, or even why the Mothers had abandoned it — the story had been old and tangled even when he was in the crèche, which made it old indeed. It would be a bad sky to fly in, he thought, reaching deliberately for rationality, hard on the instruments and tricky on the eye. He turned his back on the window, reaching into his pocket for a set of pyramids, and set himself a game, off hand against feeding hand.
It was full dark when they came for him, Sheppard and Woolsey and the consort O'Neill, and his feeding hand was winning at an improbable rate. Guide palmed the pyramids as the door slid back, and turned easily to face them.
"So my fleet is here?" It was an easy guess: Teyla would have exerted all her influence to bring them regardless of his orders, and Alabaster unquestionably had a mind of her own.
"That's right," Sheppard said, and Woolsey cleared his throat.
"Yes, and they'd like a word with you."
"I'm sure they would."
"But we'd like a word with you first," O'Neill said. "Specifically, are you going to fight beside us, or not?"
Guide studied him carefully, wishing it were Sheppard he had to deal with. Or even Woolsey; he'd come to understand a bit of Hairy's mind since they'd begun the game of diplomacy. But O'Neill he did not know at all. "You know my conditions," he said, playing for time, and saw Sheppard bite his lip.