Carson brushed past John and leaned over the board. “We’ve still got passive sensors. There’s a hive ship in orbit.”
“Oh yeah,” John said, not taking his eyes of Dahlia. “There sure is.”
“Perhaps they saw the wormhole open and came to investigate,” Teyla said.
“And started shooting the minute we cleared the event horizon? That’s coincidental,” John said.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t a trap,” Dahlia said. “I’m just saying that Ladon and I weren’t part of it. Look, he has a lot of enemies. They’d love to kill me and destroy his alliance with Atlantis. It’s possible that someone tipped off the Wraith. But it wasn’t us.”
Teyla shook her head. “That is true. I do not see what Ladon Radim would gain from killing his sister and destroying his own alliance. He does not gain Atlantis merely by killing us, and he is wise enough to know that any agreement with the Wraith to leave the Genii alone will last only as long as is convenient for them.”
John let out a long breath. “Ok. Teyla, search her. And then Carson, I want you to run a scan for a subcutaneous transmitter.”
“Fine.” A blush rose on Dahlia’s face, but she lifted her chin.
Knowing how the Genii were about personal modesty, Teyla picked up Dahlia’s pack and handed it to John. “Why don’t you and Carson stay in the cockpit and check this while we go in the back and I search her?” John’s eyes met hers and she answered his unspoken question. “Yes, it will be fine. I will call you if I need anything.”
Dahlia’s face was flaming as Teyla closed the bulkhead door. “I take it you expect me to disrobe completely.”
“Yes,” Teyla said, and her voice was cold. “It is the only way we can be certain.”
“Better you than the others,” Dahlia said, unzipping her jumpsuit.
“I thought you would agree,” Teyla said. “I did not think you would prefer to have Colonel Sheppard search you.” Her hands were quick and methodical, but still Dahlia shuddered.
“He is a hard man,” Dahlia said.
“Yes.” Teyla did not let awkwardness make her hurry. “He is a soldier. It makes one cruel.” Dahlia would know that. The Genii were no different, Ladon Radim included.
Dahlia nodded, turning and raising her arms with only a little wince. “And you?”
“I am that which is worse,” Teyla said. Let her make of that what she would.
There was a word in the language of the Genii for such as her — Bloodtainted, whose Gift of Wraith DNA had made tainted, made to glory in the mastery of others. They meant it as a mental disorder now, a name for those whose pleasure came from domination. It had been several generations since they had killed the last of those with the Gift among them. Most of those who, like her ancestors, had been the subject of those Wraith experiments had been slaughtered by the humans who came in contact with them. Only on worlds like Athos had any survived.
“You may dress,” Teyla said, and opened the communicator to the cockpit. “She is clean.”
“Her bag is fine too,” Carson said. “When Miss Radim is dressed I’ll come in and do the scan. There’s nothing she needs to take off for that.”
“Understood,” Teyla said. She turned and gave Dahlia a reassuring smile. “It seems your pack is clean as well.”
“I have told you that I was not in on this,” Dahlia said indignantly, still putting her arms in the sleeves of the jumpsuit.
“Do you think we could afford to believe you?” Teyla asked.
Dahlia’s eyes met hers, swimming with humiliation, but level all the same. “Of course not.” Her voice was stark. “That’s not the way it works.”
In a moment, when Dahlia was fully dressed, Teyla opened the doors and she and Carson traded places. She heard him chatting in his best bedside manner while she slid into the copilot’s seat next to John. Outside the front window there was nothing to see except the rocky side of the canyon.
“Ok?” John looked at her sideways.
“Yes.” Teyla leaned forward, her elbows on the edge of the console. “What is the situation?”
“We still have the cloak,” John said. “Which is why we aren’t dead. There have been four or five flyovers, but they haven’t spotted us. I got us down in a canyon, so there isn’t a lot of surface torn up that they could see even if they couldn’t see the jumper.” His hands slid over the board. “But the engines are dead. We’ve got power, but I’m not getting anything to the main drive or the vertical stabilizers. All I’ve got are the steering thrusters. That might, and that’s a big might, be enough to take off with but it won’t get us back to the gate. It wouldn’t get us a mile.”
“And the gate is sixty miles away?” Teyla rested her head on her hands. “What is that thing you say when you have done something before?”
“Déjà vu,” John said. “Maybe Carson can fix the engines.”
Teyla looked at him sharply. “Maybe Dahlia can. You know that Carson knows absolutely nothing about fixing a puddle jumper’s engines. You might as well ask me to fix them, or do it yourself.”
John’s mouth tightened. “Go on. Say it.”
“If you had listened to me about going to get Radek we would not be in this situation.”
“There. You said it.” John winced. “Need to say it again? Let me help. John, you are stupid as a stupid, stupid thing.”
“I only needed to say it once,” Teyla said. “I am certain that you will flog yourself more thoroughly than I would flog you.”
“And it will be much less fun,” he said darkly.
Surprised, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I hope you do not mean that! All this time I thought you were simply terrible at stick fighting!”
He had a sheepish expression on his face. “I didn’t mean that! Not that way.”
“You do not mean that you are throwing the fights so I will hit you?”
“Not usually.” The corner of his mouth twitched and she could not be sure whether he were teasing or not.
For a moment their eyes locked, the tension in the air between them live as electricity.
The back door slid open. “She’s good as gold,” Carson said, Dahlia behind him. Her blush had faded, and she seemed to have regained her self-possession.
Which made one of them, Teyla thought. John looked as though he had just swallowed a frog, and she imagined she looked no better.
“Great,” John said.
Teyla turned to Dahlia, her professional trader’s smile plastered to her face. “I regret that we could not take your word,” she said. “But as we are now all in this together, we must work together to solve our problems.”
Nodding, Dahlia sat down once again in her seat, Carson almost protective at her elbow.
“Let’s hear the bad news then,” Carson said. “Colonel?”
Chapter Seven: Quicksilver
Quicksilver sat before the datascreen in his laboratory, watching numbers scroll top to bottom in a blur. Once, he thought, he should have had sense from them. But now they made no sense, going so fast, telling of things he did not remember. This the Lanteans had taken from him.
Quicksilver lifted his hands to his eyes and rubbed them with his wrists.
“You are unwell?” his brother, Dust, asked, forever attentive to his mood.
“No,” he replied. “Just…” He could hardly find the words for the frustration he felt, that what should be so simple was rendered so difficult.
“It is hard, I know,” Dust said sympathetically. “But perhaps your memory will return in time. You remember nothing of Atlantis?”
Quicksilver shook his head. “Nothing.” Only a few tantalizing images, rooms, unfamiliar faces, as though seen through a sheen of water. “Tell me of Atlantis,” he said to Dust swiftly, and when his brother began to demur he pressed. “Tell me what you know. Perhaps it will help me remember.”