For him, there were no choices left to make.
The jumper was on course to its ultimate rendezvous.
It was curiously peaceful. He, Rodney McKay, was going to die and he really didn't mind at all.
Somebody had to, and it was his turn.
"Rodney?"
He jumped at the voice behind him, knowing that the jumper was empty, knowing that it had to be. There was no way anyone else could be here. No way.
And yet he twisted around in his chair.
She stood between the two rear seats, her hand on the backrest of one, in her old red Atlantis shirt, her hair pulled back from her face, and his mouth opened and closed. "You can't be here," Rodney said.
"I'm not supposed to be," Elizabeth Weir said. With quick, sharp movements she came forward and sat down in the seat beside him.
"You're dead." It wasn't the most brilliant line ever, but it did spring to mind.
"Ascended," Elizabeth said, glancing over the tactical controls.
"Aren't Ascended people not supposed to mingle with mere mortals?"
That did win a smile from her, a little sideways smile like the ones he remembered and had always liked and never said so. "Yes," she said briskly. "And if I get in trouble I'll pay the price. But you need me to do this if you're going to get through it in one piece. So I'm here." Elizabeth raised her head. "Let's do this, Rodney."
"Dr. McKay, if you'll hang on for a minute…." Sam heard Lorne's voice over the line chatter from the 302s, and she knew whatever he had to say was pointless. The Pride of the Genii was too far away, much further than the Hammond. Even if they'd managed to get beaming technology operational, Lorne could never get in range.
Nor could she. Chandler weaved and bobbed, shots telling home against the hive ship, but their batteries were still working. The Hammond was taking heavy fire. To turn tail and run would doom the ship, and even if they made for the jumper at maximum speed, the Hammond's Asgard beams were short range. Rodney was at eight to ten times the Hammond's maximum reach.
"Rodney, you don't have to do this," Sam said, but there was no answer. And of course there wouldn't be. He was right. It had to be done and nobody else could do it. But it was worth a try. "Ikram, can you get a lock on Dr. McKay?"
"No, ma'am," Ikram said quickly. "It's too far."
Franklin looked around, asking with his eyes whether they were breaking off. Three Darts screamed toward the Hammond, concentrating fire on the weakened forward shield, and Chandler dived, presenting the dorsal shield instead. A pair of 302s rose straight up the Hammond's bow, guns flaring as they skimmed over the surface just shy of a shield collision. One Dart incandesced, and the others streaked by, the 302s passing just short of the aft rail gun.
"Nice job, guys," Sam said.
"It is a pleasure, Colonel Carter," Teal'c replied with his customary aplomb.
The jumper was too far, the friendly hive ship closing on Death's ship.
"Ma'am?" Franklin asked.
Sam glanced at the screen. Already the radiation was spiking above what any human being could bear, the jumper beginning to glow. Its comm was silent. Goodbye, Rodney, she whispered to herself. Goodbye.
You can't, John started to say. On the city's sensors the jumper was so close and so distant at once, but he already had. The jumper didn't explode. It simply dissolved. The heat and radiation melted through the skin. One moment it was there and the next it was a dispersing cloud of complex atoms.
"Was someone aboard that jumper?" Woolsey asked over the comm.
"Rodney," John said. His voice sounded odd and even, not his own. "I guess he wasn't working for Queen Death, huh?" And then anger overtook him, anger at himself and Woolsey and Todd and the entire rest of the universe.
"We couldn't know," Woolsey began.
"He took my mission," John said. "My mission," and Woolsey fell silent before the fury in his voice. He opened the comm. "Todd? You see that? Todd! That was Rodney destroying your precious weapon and getting killed doing it. Now get your skinny Wraith ass into the battle! You hear me? Get your ass into the battle!"
Woolsey broke in. "We've fulfilled our part of the deal. Now fulfill yours."
The city's sensors reported movement, the ships of Todd's alliance powering weapons, the flagship beginning to move.
"We are engaging," Alabaster said over the comm, her voice tranquil. "All ships, fire as you have targets. Your cleverman's sacrifice shall not be in vain. All ahead full, please."
With a distant surge of energy, Guide's alliance opened fire.
Chapter Twenty-three
Falling
On the computer screen in front of Jennifer, the spot of light that had been Rodney's jumper was gone. The audio feed from the control room continued — Sheppard was yelling at Guide to get into the battle, hot rage in his voice — but she felt like a blanket of silence had descended around her, a sudden fall of snow.
Marie was saying something, probably all the right words of sympathy, but Jennifer brushed away a comforting hand.
"I knew this would happen," she said.
It felt less like a sudden death was supposed to than like the end of a terminal illness, the feeling that something she'd been struggling to hold onto for so long had been torn from her, and now she was lighter whether she wanted to be or not. She wouldn't wonder any longer how many more times she could fight to bring Rodney back from the brink of death before she lost him. That was over.
The floor rocked as another heavy barrage of fire hit the city's shields, and she steadied herself until the tremor passed. When she looked up, Carson had come in from the next room, his face showing that he knew.
"Did you see…?" he began.
"I know. I saw."
"Oh, Rodney." His voice was choked. "He was doing a very brave thing."
"That was Rodney," Jennifer said, and then the tears were wet on her cheeks, although she held her voice steady. "I should have married him, you know? I mean, given the way things turned out. It… it would have meant a lot to him, I think."
"You can't think that way. You couldn't have known—"
"I knew," Jennifer said. It was the price of living in this beautiful crystal city, so deceptively beautiful and so incredibly deadly. Rodney had wanted to spend the rest of his life in Atlantis, and that meant dying young.
For a moment anger and grief knotted together in her throat. There were so many things she had hoped they could have together, work and laughter and a baby for Rodney to insist on bundling in clothes too warm for the weather, a baby to wear tiny T-shirts with mathematical jokes on them. There were so many places she had wanted to see, so many things worth doing, and she would see them and do them, she knew, but not with him.
"I am so terribly sorry," Carson said softly.
"So am I," Jennifer said. She swallowed hard and brushed away tears she couldn't afford yet. "But we still have work to do."
"That we do," Carson said, and turned to check on their patients. They'd have more than enough work soon.
Just Fortune leaped willingly into battle, all systems perfect, glad in its way to finally do its part. Guide rested his hands on the controls, half in and half out of the ship-trance, a skill he had perfected over the years. The ship responded eagerly to his familiar touch, arcing up and over the dome of Atlantis's shields to bear down on the other hive. Mist's hive, he thought, or perhaps Noontide's; the two ships had been very nearly indistinguishable, grown from similar Seeds in the same year. It didn't matter. He could see the marks of damage on their mottled hide, could hear the blades at the guns marking those wounds and setting their targets. The hive could flee, or it could die.