“Thank you,” Teyla said, inclining her head politely.
“Our relationship with Todd could include him sucking the life out of people if he gets cranky enough,” John said. “I’ll go. If you want to send a military officer to go deal with Radim, send Lorne.”
“Thank you for your recommendation,” Woolsey said. He hesitated just for a moment, and then said, “Please be ready to dial out for the Genii homeworld in twenty minutes. Dr. Keller, Ronon, I’ll let you know as soon as we hear back from the advance team.”
There was an overly quiet pause.
“I’d like a word before we go, if you haven’t got somewhere else to be,” John said evenly.
“Not at all,” Woolsey said.
“I will go and prepare for our departure,” Teyla said, with a careful smile. “Carson, are there medical supplies you should bring with us?”
“I expect I could find some,” Carson said, rising. Ronon and Keller were already slipping out wordlessly.
John waited until they’d all gone before he spoke. “You can’t seriously want to send those two to deal with Todd. Ronon doesn’t have any other setting for dealing with the Wraith other than ‘shoot them,’ and Keller’s a little green for this kind of thing.”
“She has been the chief medical officer in Atlantis for over two years,” Woolsey pointed out. “And she’s worked with the Wraith — and with these particular Wraith — before. Todd was generally cooperative with her attempts to find a way for the Wraith to survive without feeding, which is frankly the closest we’ve come to a good working relationship with him.”
“I just don’t think she has a suspicious enough nature.”
“That would be more suspicious than Dr. Keller but less suspicious than Ronon?”
“Yes,” John said, although he felt he hadn’t exactly won, there.
“Colonel Sheppard,” Woolsey said, looking weary. “Please believe I’ve thought this through. I think our chances of obtaining any useful information from Todd at this point are minimal. We don’t have much to offer him, and we have no reason to believe that he has the information we need. I don’t want to leave any avenue unexplored, but I think our real hopes rest on what we can find out from Radim.”
“You didn’t say that in the briefing,” John said after a minute.
“Would you rather I had told Ronon and Dr. Keller that I think they’re unlikely to find out anything? I would like them to try. If there’s someone you think would be better suited to that mission — besides yourself and the team you’re taking to the Genii homeworld — I’m open to suggestions.”
He wished he had one. “There’s not,” John said.
“Then please trust that Ronon and Dr. Keller can handle this mission,” Woolsey said. “I realize you haven’t always had the best working relationship with the Genii in the past, but I think Radim respects you, for what that’s worth.”
“Probably not much,” John said.
Woolsey looked at him hard. “Is it really your best assessment that we can’t reach a stable truce with the Genii? I’m asking for your professional opinion.”
John took a deep breath and tried for that. “I don’t know,” he said. “Radim keeps saying he wants one. It’s just that he keeps being around when things go wrong between his people and ours. I’m not saying that he’s responsible for what Sora does, or for Kolya killing our people or capturing me or generally being a pain in the ass. I’m just saying he’s been involved in a lot of situations that have left me pretty reluctant to trust him.”
“I’m not asking you to trust him sight unseen,” Woolsey said. “Or at all. But you said yourself in the briefing for the new military personnel that the Genii are our best allies here in the Pegasus galaxy.”
“We need better allies,” John said.
“Maybe so, but that’s not today’s problem.”
“Is there a quota?”
“There are priorities,” Woolsey said. “Dr. McKay is the priority today. Try to get us some way of finding him.”
“I’ll do everything I can,” John said.
“I’m sure you will.”
Ronon was at the rail at the top of the steps in the control room. “So what are we doing?”
“I’m going to go talk to the Genii with Teyla and Carson,” John said. “I’ll get Lorne to take a team and check out the planet where Todd wants to meet. If Lorne clears it, and we’re not back yet, you and Keller go see what he has to say.”
“Just how fast do you think you can talk to the Genii?”
“I can talk pretty fast. How fast Radim’s going to be willing to talk, I don’t know.” John shrugged. “I want you to stay put unless the site is clean. If it seems like Todd’s trying to play us, the mission’s scratched. I’m serious.”
“I’m not going to let Keller walk into a trap,” Ronon said. “If it doesn’t look good, we’ll just stay here and Woolsey can negotiate some more.”
“I’ll say hi to Radim for you.”
Ronon snorted. “I think I’d rather deal with the Wraith. We’ll get in less trouble if we have to shoot them.”
“Think diplomacy,” John said.
“Right.”
He’d prefer to have something to shoot, too, but he was comforting himself with the thought that if this worked out, they’d have a target. That was what they really needed.
“Control, this is Jumper One,” Sheppard said over the radio. “We’re ready to go.”
Radek looked over the console on the upper tier and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. The new gate technicians were all nervous at having to learn the ropes while everyone was under so much pressure. Of course, they would probably have been even more nervous had Rodney been here to find fault with everything they did.
“Copy, Jumper One,” Airman Salawi said from her station below at the gate board. She glanced up at him for confirmation, her hand hovering over the DHD, and he came around the monitors and stood beside her chair. “Not this time,” he said quietly. “We let jumper pilots dial out themselves, using the jumper’s DHD. The city’s systems will bring the jumper down from the bay automatically, and ensure it remains well clear of the kawoosh when the gate opens.”
Salawi grinned. “Is that a technical term, Doctor? Kawoosh?”
“It more or less is.” Radek smiled back. She was a good kid, come here a month ago from the SGC where she’d barely begun her training before O’Neill had sent her to Atlantis. “You people invented it. We just use it.”
“Weren’t you at the SGC too?”
“I was for a year or so,” Radek said. He shifted from foot to foot, gauging the preparations below to a nicety. “I will tell you sometime how Dr. Jackson recruited me. But I have been here more than five years now, so this is home.”
Salawi shook her head. “You must have some stories.”
“I imagine that I do,” Radek said. “But you had best hope that in the future I do not have stories of you.”
“Only the good kind,” Salawi said, grinning. “I wouldn’t mind some stories about me like the ones about Colonel Sheppard.”
“Possibly not,” Radek said, and patted her on the shoulder to soften it. “But there is a high price for stories.”
It had been a year ago that he had come back from an offworld mission, not a bad one at all, to hear what had transpired in his absence — an alien intelligence communicating with Mr. Woolsey and Rodney, Sheppard trapped on the mainland by its machinations. An alien intelligence that had at least once impersonated him to speak with Rodney.
Very weird. He had never had an alien intelligence impersonate him before. He was only sorry that he had missed it.