“No, you’re right,” Daniel said. “But that hasn’t stopped a few humans from doing it.”
“As far as we know, you’re the only one,” John said.
“I’m not the only one. There have always been stories of mystics and saints, people who wandered into another world, or were taken bodily into heaven, or whatever your cultural frame of reference might be. The capacity to Ascend is written into our genes. It’s just that it’s incredibly rare for someone to stumble onto the way to do it.”
“It was not even possible for all of the Ancestors to Ascend,” Teyla said.
“No. No, that’s true. But they were trying, as a people. Most of the Asgard weren’t interested. So if one particular Asgard had found a way to Ascend, the same way that a handful of humans have over the centuries, Thor might not have thought it was important enough to even mention to us. If he even knew about it. Maybe from the Asgard point of view, she just disappeared.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “If they didn’t know that she ascended, they wouldn’t be trying to force her to unascend now.”
Daniel turned up his hands. “I’m not sure why they would try to force her to unascend. All right, it wasn’t something they approved of, but would they really care that much about one person making an unusual choice?”
Ronon shrugged. “Maybe she’s causing them problems.”
“She can’t have been interfering in any meaningful way in their activities, or she would have gotten kicked out by the other Ascended beings.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Helping you is right on the line of what an Ascended being can get away with. Trying to push the other Asgard around from the great beyond is definitely over the line.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows went up. “The great beyond?”
“Or whatever you want to call it.”
“Maybe there’s some reason that they want her back,” Elizabeth said.
“It can’t be sentimental attachment,” Rodney said. “All the Asgard who actually knew her are probably long dead by now.”
“Or at least recently dead,” Daniel said. “No, I feel like there’s something we’re missing.”
Teyla frowned, considering the question. “What have the Asgard in this galaxy wanted in the past?”
“To fix their planet’s ecology. To fix their own genetic damage that they caused by cloning themselves over and over again.”
Elizabeth put her head to one side. “And to fix their genetic damage, they would need?”
“An undamaged sample of Asgard DNA,” Rodney said. From his expression, Daniel thought he followed Elizabeth’s line of thought. “One that doesn’t come from a clone, or from a computer model that was made after they started frying their own genes.”
Daniel nodded. “But all the Asgard who were alive before they started cloning themselves are dead, or—”
“Or Ascended,” Elizabeth finished.
“That’s what they want,” Daniel said at once. “To force an Ascended Asgard back into physical form so that they can use her to restore their species.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “She doesn’t want to go.”
“Then she may be in trouble. We know the Asgard just got their hands on a device that may let them do just that.”
“I don’t think they know how to use it,” Elizabeth said. “Ran said they were still trying to understand how unascension works. And that they… ” She looked up, startled, as if at sudden memory. “That they’re looking for people who’ve done it.”
There was a momentary pause. “We may be in trouble,” Daniel said.
John gritted his teeth. “We need to get both of you to a more secure location.”
“The delay isn’t on my end,” Elizabeth pointed out.
John thumbed his radio on. “Major Lorne, I need the alpha site set up ten minutes ago.”
“Copy that, Colonel, but apparently our equipment damage really is being caused by a microorganism that eats anything based on petroleum. We’re trying to get it contained.”
“I thought it was contained at the alpha site.”
“So did we. But we’ve got some equipment damage in the supply warehouse that seems to have spread from the damaged supplies from the alpha site. We’re hoping we can get a lid on the whole thing, but I’ve got the city locked down right now as a precaution.”
“Not fixing this would be very, very bad,” Zelenka said urgently over the radio.
“I get it,” John said. He looked around. “What are the chances that I brought this thing here?”
“Hopefully not very much. I’m more worried about the trade goods we just handed over. You should tell the Satedans to keep the supplies we brought in today isolated.”
“Until we fix this, right?”
“We’re working on it,” Lorne said.
“We are, we are. We will contain this,” Zelenka said.
“Containing it in the city still lets it destroy the city,” Rodney snapped.
“Most of the Ancient equipment does not rely heavily on petroleum-based plastics,” Zelenka said. “What is most vulnerable is our equipment that we brought from Earth.”
“That’s just great,” John said. “Do we have a plan for getting rid of this thing?”
“Isolate the microorganism or substance that is causing this and find a way to decontaminate the affected sections,” Zelenka said. Daniel had heard Sam put on the spot enough times to understand that what he’d just heard wasn’t a solution, but a restatement of the problem in slightly more technical terms. Even so, it seemed to mollify John.
“All right, keep me posted,” he said. “And get me the gate address for somewhere we can go that isn’t inhabited, isn’t uninhabitable, and isn’t contaminated by this thing. We may need to proceed there without waiting for the medical team and the security team.”
“Working on it,” Lorne said.
Ronon turned his head abruptly. “What’s that noise?”
“It sounds like an airplane,” Elizabeth said.
“We don’t have airplanes,” Ronon said. “And that doesn’t sound like a Dart.”
There was the sound of voices raised in consternation from the square outside. “We’ll go check it out,” John said. He nodded to Teyla and Rodney to follow him. “Ronon, stay with Elizabeth.”
Daniel wasn’t sure if Ronon was supposed to be guarding Elizabeth from whatever was outside or guarding the rest of them from Elizabeth, but Ronon nodded and moved to stand behind her.
“I’ll be fine,” Elizabeth said. “Go.”
John headed out the door at a run, with Teyla and Rodney close behind him. Daniel went over to the window. The square was emptying fast, people getting under cover as the shadow of a ship passed over the pavement. He craned his neck to look up. It was a small ship, three or four times the size of a puddle-jumper, now hovering over the center of the gate square.
“We’ve got company,” he said as he turned back to Elizabeth and Ronon.
He was in time to see the shimmer of Asgard transport beams as both Elizabeth and Ronon disappeared from sight.
John came running out into the square, Teyla and Rodney at his heels, to see a number of heavily armed Satedans forming up in front of one of the buildings across the square. Apparently Cai had persuaded a few of Sateda’s scattered soldiers to return. Not that there was much they could do with rifles and pistols against a spaceship.
The captain in charge didn’t seem to agree, shouting an order to fire. Bullets thundered upwards toward the hovering spaceship, but the few that actually reached it spat off its shields to ricochet along with the complete misses in a lethal hail back toward the square.
“Hey!” John shouted, dodging for the cover of the nearest set of brick steps.
The Satedan captain waved him back furiously. “Get under cover! What are you, stupid?”