"You're going to be the one to kill them, Ronon, just like putting a bullet through their heads," John said. "Rodney, and Teyla, and every other person in the Pegasus galaxy whose only crime is that one of their ancestors was experimented on by the Wraith. Could you do it if you had to look them in the eye and shoot them? Say that all those people are acceptable collateral damage and shoot them one by one?"
"If I had to," Ronon said. His hand was sweating despite the cold, and he tightened his grip on Hyperion's weapon. "If it was the only way, I'd do it."
"Even Torren?" John's voice was even and unrelenting. "If it were Torren standing here in front of you, I want to know if you could get down on one knee, and put your gun against his little head, and look into his eyes, and pull that trigger."
He wanted to say yes. He had to say yes. He'd sworn that he was willing to make any sacrifice, to do anything to destroy the Wraith. If what it took was killing a little kid he'd seen born, a little kid he'd played with and watched tucked into bed at night–
"Give me the weapon, Ronon."
He was holding onto the weapon so hard that his hand was shaking. "I ought to do it," he said from between gritted teeth. "Why can't I do it?"
"Because you're human," John said softly. "And you love Torren, and you love Teyla and even Rodney, and if the Wraith turn you into someone who's ready to kill the people he loves, then they win, Ronon. They win. Because they've made you worse than they are."
For a long moment, his finger trembled on the trigger. The Wraith had made him into a runner, a hunted animal, and then a hunter who killed them ruthlessly and without mercy. In Atlantis he'd remembered what it was to be a soldier and a man. And now he had people who trusted him to protect them. People like Torren.
"I'm nothing like them," Ronon said. In one swift move, he held Hyperion's weapon out to John, and John took it from him.
"You're a good man, Ronon."
He shook his head. "Tell that to the people who are going to get eaten by the Wraith because I couldn't pull the trigger."
"We'll see about that," John said. "There's still time to destroy this thing. If we can get Guide's fleet in on our side, we've got a fighting chance."
"And after that?"
"Let's worry about 'after that' after that, okay?" John turned on his heel and headed inside, Ronon trailing after him. He felt drained and strangely weightless, as if he'd been carrying something heavy at arm's length for days and had finally put it down.
John jogged into the control room and skidded to a stop. "We found Hyperion's weapon," he said. "Radio the Hammond and tell them to come get it."
"The Hammond is out of range," Woolsey said.
"So get it back in range."
Woolsey shook his head, his face pale. "Colonel Carter reports that she is heavily pressed by Wraith ships. The Hammond can't come back for Hyperion's weapon."
Chapter Eighteen
The Willing Sacrifice
The Marine guards were gone at last. Presumably with Atlantis under attack by the Wraith they had better things to do than watch Rodney McKay sit in a cell. He'd felt the city lift, a low rumble of subsonics in his bones. They'd done it without him. Presumably Zelenka had handled the technical end and Sheppard had been in the chair.
And he was still here in the cage, unable to give vital help because they wouldn't trust him even though they needed him.
But the Marines were gone now. Everyone was busy. So it was time.
Rodney sauntered casually over to the corner pillar that had the control box on the outside, out of reach of course, and on the other side of the force field. After that time with the Replicators, did they seriously think he'd ever again put himself in a position where he couldn't get the cell open in two seconds flat?
The brig control boxes weren't part of the city's systems, a security feature intended to prevent someone from seizing a control terminal somewhere and being able to release prisoners remotely. No, you had to go to each cell and use the self-contained unit. Definitely safer, and also highly unlikely that Zelenka and Jeannie had checked them when they cleared all his code out of the system.
Rodney leaned over, speaking clearly and distinctly. Sometimes simple was best. "Two, three, five, thirteen, eighty-nine." The force field died and the door bars slid open.
Rodney McKay was back in business.
They finally had the weapon, just a little too late. John Sheppard leaned over Zelenka's shoulder in the control room. Data streamed in from Atlantis' sensors, much more simplistic than the data feeds to the chair but clear enough. Those distant points of light were the 302s engaging Queen Death's Darts, while the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii evaded the hive ships' fire, trying to take shots and back off. But it wasn't going to work. They were outnumbered, and the cruisers were herding them, closing in in three dimensions, boxing them in a translucent cube of fields of fire from which there would be no escape.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the system, Guide's fleet waited. And they would wait until the weapon was destroyed. Or they would wait until it was too late.
Sam had thought she could dump it in the sun, but Sam was engaged, her life and her ship on the line with no margin for error. Sam wasn't going to be able to do anything about the weapon, not now and maybe not ever.
Okay. Dumping it in the sun would destroy it. And the only way to do that was with a puddle jumper. Yeah, that would mean taking a puddle jumper through the edges of the battle zone, but it could be cloaked. He could do that.
He could. And nobody else. John looked around the control room. O'Neill bent over a console on the lower tier, no doubt giving Airman Salawi hives by rubbernecking over her shoulder. He could fly the city in a pinch. Or Carson. But neither of them could take a puddle jumper smoothly through incidental fire, and besides it was his job, not the general's, not the doctor's.
John straightened up, walking purposefully toward the stairs. Woolsey was in his office but didn't look up, his head bent over data screens. Dump it in the sun. He'd have to get in pretty close to make sure the weapon was destroyed quickly, but the jumper's shields could handle it. The cloak couldn't. Once he got into the coronasphere the level of radiation would render the cloak useless. Anybody could see him. Including Queen Death's Darts. Not that they could dip into the coronasphere, but they could sure as hell shoot at him. And he couldn't exactly dodge.
He stopped on the stairs, turning back to look, Atlantis in her hubbub, the gateroom filled with everyone about their work. No one looked up, not even Radek, pushing his glasses back up on his nose as he toggled power around, talking in his headset at the same time. He thought he'd seen a flash of red by the console, the place where Elizabeth had stood before, the first time he'd taken out a puddle jumper to stop a Wraith fleet, but of course there was no one there. It was memory.
He turned and bounded up the stairs to the jumper bay.
John Sheppard's hands were quick and confident on the controls of the puddle jumper, putting it through the preflight warm-up. They didn't hesitate at all. After all, he'd done this hundreds of times. It wasn't any different because it was the last time.
This time it was truly the last.
How many times had he done this before expecting to die, even courting death? Each time he'd figured it was fair. Someone had to do it and it ought to be him, the marked man. Borrowed time ran out.
The first time had been with the Genii's improvised nuke, a desperate Hail Mary pass, the last chance to take out a hive ship. He'd figured he'd had two years, more than Holland or Mitch or Dex got — two years when he'd sometimes felt like it would have been better if he'd gone with them, paid the price in full. He hadn't resented it. He'd looked Elizabeth full in the face and run up the stairs to the jumper bay and she hadn't called him back. She knew. And she knew it had to be.