The last time he'd had more time to think, waiting for his target over Earth sleeping below, cities stretching like chains of light across continents. He'd drifted in low orbit, his 302 inert, watching oceans and continents beneath him, watching a last sunrise over the Pacific Rim, swift and sudden and so beautiful that a lump came in his throat. And it was still fair. Him, not Ronon. Him, not Rodney who had Jennifer now and a whole life ahead of him. Him, not Teyla, who had Torren who needed her…. It was his job, his life for his team's, his life for everyone on Earth. He was the marked man, and it was fair. It had to be, and he was at peace with that.
And now. John's eyes flickered shut for one moment, feeling the jumper's engines warming beneath him.
This time it was hard. He couldn't help but imagine all the mornings he might wake up beside someone who loved him, all the days that might be spent in the city of his dreams, all the years of watching Torren grow from baby to boy to man. John Sheppard didn't want to die.
And maybe that was how it worked, he thought. Maybe that was part of the price. You had to want to live to die. You had to want to live for it to be worth something.
But it still had to be done.
John checked the power indicators one last time. Show time. He heard a faint noise behind him as his hand slid to the button to close the tailgate….
…a blue flash enveloped Sheppard and he sprawled sideways, dropping out of the chair half in the middle of his turn, hand open against the deck plates unmoving.
"Sorry, John," Rodney said, stepping over him. He grabbed him by both wrists and dragged, hauling him through the back and out the tailgate, his white hair gleaming blue in the jumper's running lights.
He left him lying on the deck just behind the tailgate and went forward, the back gate rising obediently. The jumper was already warmed up, the controls ready under his hands. Rodney eased the jumper forward, lifting up as the ceiling above opened to the starry sky.
Jack glared at the tactical display as though he could somehow change what he was seeing. Three of Queen Death's cruisers had made their own microjump to engage the Hammond and the Pride of the Genii, and now his ships were fully engaged. A light flashed, became a swarm of tiny dots, and he swore: the biggest of the cruisers had just launched Darts. Hammond launched 302s to counter, but that was going to delay them even further. He pushed himself away from the display.
"Colonel Sheppard!"
There was no answer, and he looked around the control room. "Where's Sheppard?"
"He was here," Woolsey began, and a new light began to flash on the console in front of the young airman — Salawi, her name badge read.
"What's that?" Jack demanded.
"Someone's launching a puddlejumper, sir," Salawi answered, her hands busy on the board. "I can't shut it down."
Jack swore again, loudly and with greater feeling. "Sheppard."
"What?" Woolsey looked up sharply, shock replaced with comprehension as he made the same calculation. "No, that would be suicide —"
"Yeah." Jack glared at the screen. "Salawi, open a channel."
"Sorry, sir," she answered. "They're not answering."
"Damn it, Sheppard," Jack said. He could do the same math, though: take the jumper, drop the weapon into the sun so Todd could see it, and just maybe save the day for everyone. He might even, if he was very lucky, actually survive, though the odds against were astronomical. All of which paled when weighed against the lives he might save. Trust Sheppard to see it first, and to act. I ought to bust him back to airman for that — except if he survives, he'll have saved us all, and if he doesn't…. Well, he may still have saved us all, but even if he hasn't, even if Atlantis has to cut and run, it won't matter in the slightest. And maybe I'm just jealous because I didn't think of it first.
But that wasn't a general's job — wasn't really a colonel's job, either, but it really wasn't a general's. He took a deep breath. "Can you track him?"
"Negative," Salawi said. "He's cloaked. The jumper's off our sensors entirely."
And that was that. Jack took a breath, put Sheppard and his suicide mission firmly out of his mind. "All right," he said aloud. "Dr. Beckett, I'm going to take the chair. We're going after Queen Death's fleet."
Ronon made his way down to the detention cells, wanting to look in on Rodney. He'd been trying not to think of the man as his friend while he was considering using Hyperion's weapon, trying to think of him as already dead. But he wasn't dead, and it must have been driving him crazy to be locked up with the city in flight and a battle about to begin.
John and Carter would find some way to destroy the weapon, he was sure, and then Todd's Wraith would jump in on their side. They'd beat Queen Death, and then… they'd go on fighting the Wraith. He wasn't sure whether he hated himself for letting the weapon that would have ended that fight out of his hands, or whether he felt a deep sense of relief. Maybe both, as little sense as that made.
If he told Rodney that he'd been planning to use the weapon, Rodney would tell him he was crazy. He could already hear him yelling: What were you thinking? You would have killed me! There are enough things in this galaxy that want to kill me without having to worry about you!
But Rodney would forgive him. He wasn't sure if Teyla ever would, if he ever told her. Not when Torren's life had hung in the same balance. But Rodney would, in his own strange way, understand. Maybe he should tell him, and give him a chance to shout about something and wave his hands around. It would only be fair, and it might make Rodney feel better.
He palmed open the door, and stopped stock-still. The force-field that should have surrounded the cell was down, and the cell was empty.
"McKay," he snarled, and reached up to turn his radio on. "Sheppard, this is Ronon. McKay's loose." There was no answer. "Sheppard. Do you read me?"
Still no answer. Maybe he was heading out to the Hammond with the weapon. "Woolsey, this is Ronon. You read me?"
"Yes, Ronon," Woolsey said, sounding distracted.
"McKay's gone," Ronon said. "I just checked his cell. There's no one here."
"Damn," Woolsey said shortly. "All right. We'll send out security teams looking for him. Hopefully we can find him before he does too much damage."
"Where's Sheppard?"
"On his way to drop the weapon into the sun," Woolsey said. His voice was strained. "Which is probably a one-way mission."
"Understood," Ronon said after a momentary pause. "I'll look for McKay."
"Please don't hesitate to stun him when you find him."
"Believe me, I won't," Ronon said grimly.
He wasn't going to think about one-way missions yet. There would be time to start thinking of John as dead later, and time to mourn. For now, all he could think about was that he had been right about McKay, right all along: Queen Death had broken him, and now if they weren't lucky, Rodney was on his way to gut the city from the inside so that Queen Death could kill them all.
Atlantis's chair looked exactly like the one in Antarctica. Jack eyed it with disfavor as Carson Beckett detached himself from its embrace, wondering if it felt the same. But that wasn't something he could ask — wasn't something anyone else could answer, except Sheppard. The last time he'd sat in a chair like this, tried to take full control of its systems, he'd nearly died. Of course, he'd also had his head stuffed full of the Ancient database, which had probably been the real problem, not the chair itself.