Her brother, Mark, had sent pictures from her niece’s soccer game and asked if she’d buy some Girl Scout cookies.
Cassie, her foster daughter, had sent three emails back to back, one asking her if she’d seen Band of Brothers, one asking if she knew anything about airborne training in Toccoa, Georgia in 1943, and one talking about how she hated her very boring job. She had been there three months, and of course it was boring. Sam didn’t think Cassie would be satisfied with nonprofit work in the long run, no matter how worthy the cause.
Teal’c had not sent one, a sure sign that he was off in trouble of his own. Otherwise he would have replied to her last one, sent from the last Milky Way gate outbound, a remote planet where once they had hunted for the Lost City of the Ancients, hoping it held weapons or secrets that would help them against Anubis and the Goa’uld. It held nothing, now or then, but it was the last Stargate, the last outpost of the Ancients in the Milky Way, before the long, cold void between galaxies.
Jack had sent seven emails, one each day since the last transmission, one for her to read each day until the next one. Hey, Carter…
And Daniel… There was a long ramble about Phoenician gods, a request for samples of alphabets now current in the Pegasus Galaxy, and the half humorous question of whether or not she’d been shot yet.
She’d reply to Daniel.
Sorry, Daniel. Not shot yet. Maybe tomorrow. We’ll see. We’re flying straight into Queen Death’s hive ship and it might be a trap or maybe not, so same old same old here. Listen, you’ve got the letters if you need them, right? I sent them to you instead of Mitchell. You know what to do with them if it comes to that. Which it won’t. I won’t bore you again telling you what a sweet ship Hammond is, but I’m still in love and familiarity isn’t breeding contempt but then it never does with me. Lots of beautiful Ancient buildings send their regards. I wish you were here. I truly do.
“We’re getting ready to exit hyperspace,” Sam said, standing up from her chair and coming around to where John and his team were waiting. “It’s about to be showtime.”
“We’re ready,” John said. They’d slept for a while, or at least he and Ronon had slept, in bunks in the cabin Sam had given them, and he expected Teyla had too, from the fact that she wasn’t yawning. Then they’d spent the rest of the trip trying not to pace and get in the way of Sam’s people. Now Ronon and Teyla looked as eager as he felt to get moving.
“As soon as we jump in, I expect they’re going to start trying to power up the ship,” Sam said.
“And our clock starts ticking, I know.”
“I’ll radio you if it looks like it’s starting to go bad. If they get their defensive systems back up, it’s possible that we can disable them. If it looks like that’s not going to happen, and we start taking a pounding, we’re going to have to jump out.”
“I know,” John said. “We’re ready.”
“Preparing to exit hyperspace,” the Hammond’s helmsman said.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Good luck.” She glanced over at a waiting technician. “Beam them down.”
The shimmer of the Asgard beaming technology was always disorienting for a moment. It took a couple of heartbeats before the hive ship corridor resolved itself clearly around John. Ronon had already put his back to John’s, covering the length of the corridor behind them. Teyla stepped to John’s left, her P90 at the ready, taking in their position.
The corridor was empty for the moment, the red light that the Wraith seemed to prefer tracing the weirdly organic shapes of the walls. John glanced down at his life-signs detector. There were moving forms nearby, but there was no way to tell if they were separated by walls or if they’d run into them in moments.
Sam had beamed them into what they’d guessed was the laboratory section of the ship, but it was hard to tell from featureless corridor if they’d gotten it right. The holding cells should be up and forward. If Todd’s tip was good, though, that would be a needlessly dangerous detour.
He chose the direction that promised fewer Wraith ahead, and signaled Ronon to take point. If they ran into one or two isolated Wraith, Ronon’s pistol would make less noise than P90 fire. If they ran into more than that, they’d take that as it came.
Teyla followed Ronon, her eyes searching the walls for signs of a door or side passageway. She was moving easily enough, showing no signs that her hip was bothering her. He just hoped this wasn’t going to end with them having to retreat at a sprint.
Ronon lifted a hand to stop them, and gestured to an opening in the wall. John glanced down at the life signs detector. There was no one in there. It looked like a laboratory when he looked inside, with benches and consoles and what might have been a large display screen against the wall, although it was dark.
“If the ship has powered down completely, it may not be possible for the scientists to go about their normal work,” Teyla said under her breath. She stepped forward, running her hands over one of the consoles. “I do not believe the main databanks are currently operable.”
John glanced up at the dark display screen. “You think they gave everybody the afternoon off?”
Ronon was still covering the corridor outside from the doorway. “Then what’d they do with McKay?”
“Put him back in a holding cell, maybe. Or maybe they aren’t going to stop asking him questions just because their computers are down.”
“Perhaps their scientists are needed to put the ship into its state of hibernation, and to restore it to its normal function.” Teyla spread one hand across the console, her fingers moving purposefully. “I am trying to activate this console, but the ship is not responding. It is as if it is sleeping.”
“We’d like it to stay asleep,” John said.
“We would also like to know how long it will take to power up the ship.”
“We can’t waste time trying to find that out,” John said. “The important thing is finding Rodney. If the defenses go back up, we’ll figure out something.”
“Would we not like to know where he is?” Teyla asked, not yet stepping away from the console.
“Can you get that thing to work or not?”
Teyla frowned, her hand moving on the console almost as if she were trying to push it along. John was reminded, in the sudden vivid way that irrelevant things rose into memory, of a herdsman trying to clear cows from a road.
“No,” she said finally in frustration. “I cannot.”
“Then let’s go.”
He waved them back out into the corridor. The next two openings were also empty rooms, one a storage room of some kind full of containers of liquid that didn’t seem to bear investigating, the other another laboratory, also deserted. He spared a glance for the life signs detector, and swore under his breath.
He tapped Ronon’s arm and gestured for him to hold up. They were going to have company. Ronon nodded, smiling sharply, and held his pistol at the ready, his whole body expectant. He looked almost happy at the prospect of getting to shoot something.
John tensed, waiting, painfully aware of the seconds passing. They must already be starting to power up the hive ship. They had to find Rodney before that happened, or else they had to figure on making their own way off the ship, and with the ship on alert that wasn’t going to be easy. Still, maybe they could get to the dart bay, take a dart out in the confusion and signal the Hammond —