The Stars My Destination (SGA, ensemble) 12/17
Title: The Stars My Destination (12/17)
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Star Trek 2009 (mashup)
Length: 91,750 (total); 6,094 (this part)
Characters: All of them!
PairingS: Canonical levels of Elizabeth/Simon, Teyla/Kanaan
warnings: Graphic violence
Summary: When a terror from out of time threatens the heart of the Federation, the crew of the USS Atlantis must band together in order to stop it. But can they overcome their own demons to stop the greatest threat they'll ever face?
Twelve
"I appreciate you taking time to talk to the senate, Doctor Beckett," Elizabeth said sincerely. The military hospital was in the mountains, high above Hoff's main city, and every window glowed with pearly light, a white sun filtered through low clouds; a comforting change from the artificial lights on the Atlantis or her last glimpse of Vulcan's smoke-choked sky.
"Och, don't think anything of it," Beckett insisted, waving the words off with one hand. "The senate is quite keen on establishing better relations with the Federation; they just need reminding of that sometimes. The refugees will be welcome here until another ship can come fetch them."
"I'm sure that I leave them in capable hands," she murmured, for lack of anything else to say. It had taken just over eleven and a half hours to get here, with McKay ranting about the strain on the warp coils the entire time, and another two hours to transport the injured to the medical center, and the remainder of the Vulcan refugees to temporary housing. They'd crammed a few hundred souls into the Atlantis before they left; a drop in the bucket compared to those left behind, in the evacuation fleet or on Vulcan's surface. And compared to the number lost...
"I wish we could offer you help with the repairs," Beckett continued quietly. "But I'm afraid the Hoffans don't have anything near as large or advanced as a Constitution class in their fleet."
"The supply depot at Delta Vega is only another three hours at warp," Elizabeth said assured him. She turned to peer at the door of an exam room; her hair swung freely, an unfamiliar sensation. She'd had to trim off the burnt ends, and the resulting bob was too short to pin back. "Once we get there, we should be able to repair our warp drive and hopefully finish the installation of our long-range antenna."
"Mm, yes, a bit hard to do your duty when you can't make a long-distance call." They came to the door of Beckett's office, where he paused. "Can I offer you a cup of tea, Commander?"
She forced a smile; now that the abrasions on her face had been treated, it didn't even hurt. "I really should be getting back to my ship, Dr. Beckett. The sooner we set off, the sooner we'll get to Delta Vega."
"You're not waiting to hear how Starfleet takes your report?" Beckett asked, looking surprised.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Regardless of what they say, we'll be heading straight back to Earth. Atlantis needs repairs that can only be done in dry dock, and we don't have much to contribute once the fleet returns from Vorash." She'd included instructions to forward all further communication to Delta Vega anyway. Also a private message to Admiral Hammond-assuming he was willing to listen to anything she had to say-asking him to order the fleet back from Vorash directly, if he could communicate with them. Assuming he hadn't already done it, of course.
"I heard a rumor there were shots exchanged there, too," Beckett said absently. "Though of course rumors coming out of Area 52 are nothing new..." She forced a smile, and hopefully Beckett thought she was admiring his wit. She'd been given a sketchy briefing on the Vorash mission, and the thought of the Federation at war on two fronts after losing a half-dozen ships made her vaguely ill. "Still, if you stay a bit longer, Dr. Traalee should be regaining consciousness soon, and we'll have a better idea of the extent of his injuries."
"I'm sure he's in capable hands," she said; there was one other visit she had to make before they could break orbit. "And our remaining medical staff should be able to get us back to Earth in one piece. Thank you again, Dr. Beckett."
"Safe travels, Commander Weir," Beckett said, and he offered her another smile before he disappeared into his office.
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The mountains above the Hoffan capital were pretty, Jonn had to give them that: blue-green pines interspersed with broadleaf trees in a fetching shade of lavender. A little morning mist was still caught in some of the hollows, reflecting back the heavy gray bellies of the clouds, so that the whole area seemed to floating in a foggy void. He rubbed his wrists where Ford had removed the handcuffs, and thought this wasn't the worst possible place to get kicked off a ship; there was an atmosphere and everything. Like Colorado Springs for the colorblind.
"How long d'you think I'm stuck here?" he asked, turning away from the window to look at the Starfleet nurse who'd officially taken custody of him when Weir had him put off the ship.
She shrugged, still occupied with a padd. "Depends. The Yorktown was scheduled to make a visit next week, but, well...it could be a while."
Whereas Atlantis would be back to Earth in a couple of hours once they fixed the warp drive. Jonn wondered if that was a kindness or another example of Weir fucking with him. "Do I get confined a brig or what?"
"Do you want to be in a brig?" she asked. "I mean, I guess we could ask the Hoffans if they have one..."
"Gotcha." Jonn glanced out the window, at the jewel-toned mountains. "So what do I do until my ride gets here?"
"We've got paperwork you can review for completeness, storage areas you can reorganize and if all else fails, a couple of the Hoffan privates would dearly love some help on laundry duty, I'm sure," she said absently.
Jonn sighed. "Sounds like a laugh a minute around here."
"It's a hospital, not an amusement park," she said. "You can go look for the asteroid if you're that bored."
Jonn frowned at her. "Asteroid?"
"Mmm, yeah." She groped for a stylus on the desk to mark something on her padd. "It came down yesterday, somewhere up in these mountains, and the local authorities have been all over themselves trying to find it. Apparently the space force never saw it coming and the air force couldn't get any telemetry on it before it went down. Pretty embarrassing all around."
Out the window, a fine mist was beginning to fall. Jonn thought for a little while about spending the next indeterminate number of days playing gopher to the hospital staff while waiting for a Starfleet ship to come re-arrest him. "Yeah, I'm just gonna take a walk for a little while," he declared.
"Mmm," the nurse said; she hadn't looked up at him for the entire conversation, had she? "Remember, if you aren't back by nightfall, you're AWOL."
Jonn grabbed the jacket he'd been issued-a jacket, but still not a tunic, and at this rate he'd never get to wear one-and headed out of the main hospital building.
-\-\-\-\-\-
She found Simon in one of the private rooms, sitting with the boy Chief Markham had rescued. He was sleeping, curled on his side, while a panel overhead ran out his vital signs. Simon sat at the side of the bed, hands folded as if in meditation, but he raised his head when Elizabeth paused outside the door.
"We're preparing to break orbit soon," she told him, stepping into the room.
He nodded, once. "You are returning to Earth, then?"
"We have to stop to make some repairs," she said, frowning. "Aren't you coming?"
He looked down at the boy sleeping on the bed. "I have a duty to my people, Elizabeth," he said quietly.
She swallowed hard, uncertain why the words felt like a punch in the stomach. "And what about me?" she asked quietly.
He shut his eyes briefly. "Your world is not in ashes."
"Vulcan is my world, too," she shot back, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.
"And yet you take us here." Simon opened his eyes, but they were unreadable, implacable, a thousand miles away. "You chose to abandon Vulcan in its hour of greatest need."
"I had no choice!" she protested. He fists clenched and she let them. "One ship cannot provide aid to six billion."
"So you offer it to none?" Simon asked, and there was something in his voice she wasn't used to hearing, something rough and broken. "How many have died, Elizabeth? How many will die in the days to come without shelter, without water, without medical aid? And you bring me here, far from those with the greatest need, because-why? Because of some selfish fear? Because you cannot bear to face what has been done?"
"I saved your life!" Elizabeth shouted, and on the bed the boy stirred in his sleep.
Something in Simon's face twisted. "I did not ask you to!"
They stared at each other for a moment, and Elizabeth couldn't quite get her mouth closed. Simon, after a moment, stood and went to stand at the small window, to look out over the mountain vista and the sparkling city visible below. "My apologies," he said, eventually, in a rusty voice. "That was...illogical."
"I don't think any of us are feeling very logical right now," she said, and swallowed around the dryness in her throat. For a moment, she had a vision of herself going to him, embracing him from behind; perhaps he would turn and hold her, perhaps he would simply take her hand, but either way they could take this moment to surrender to their common grief-
Simon's head dipped, once, and then he straightened again, and when he turned around he was holding something in the palm of his hand. "You should have this," he said. "It is a custom of your people, not mine."
Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to take the two short steps to cross the room. "Simon, no," she said-plead-"This wasn't my fault."
"No," he said. "But I do not think this promise has been true for some time. And when so many of my people lie dead, it would be...illogical, to proceed with this."
"To marry an alien, you mean?" she asked. She blinked; her eyes were gritty from too little sleep, and it might've been a relief if she could cry. "Is that all I am to you now?"
"I do not have to defend my logic to you," he said curtly.
"Nor I to you," Elizabeth said. "I did what was best for my ship and crew, and what was within our capabilities, and I still despair that it wasn't more. But I did not abandon you."
"Never?" he asked archly.
Elizabeth walked out of the room, into the high, airy corridor, where she breathed deeply and tried to rein in her thundering heart. There was a time when Simon would have forgiven her this display of emotion, would've waited for her to compose herself and then come out after her to continue the conversation.
But she was alone in the hallway now, and behind her, she heard the door of the room click softly shut.
Eventually, she straightened up and smoothed the front of her uniform. She raised a hand to her head, checking for the bun that was no longer there. Then she pulled her communicator off her belt. "Weir to Atlantis."
"Atlantis here, ma'am."
"I'm ready to go," she said, with more calm than she actually felt; but if she said it enough it would be true. "One to beam up."
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
There were trails, leading away from the main part of the base into the mountains; Jonn guessed he wasn't the first one to find the place claustrophobic for one reason or another. He had to haggle with the Hoffan gate guards just to be let out the door, but they eventually issued him a temporary ID card that would let him come and go as he wanted. If he'd been stuck on the base until Starfleet came to get him, he might've gone AWOL just to be contrary.
Hell, he still could-save everybody the trouble of the inevitable ouster. Hoff had a civilian space presence; he could jump a freighter to the farthest edge of Pegasus and never look back...find a spaceship to fly and somebody who would let him. There were worse ways to make a living.
Except Rodney might still get in trouble for his part in the whole scheme, and Jonn couldn't let him face a court-martial alone. He wasn't that much of a scumbag. And besides, that ship was still out there, Michael's ship...whatever it was, whatever he was. And maybe he should've walked away from it, maybe it didn't really matter, but for him this thing was personal. Not because of Vulcan, exactly-not even because of his mother, who he'd never really known even though she'd been hanging over him most of his life. But Michael had called him, called them by name. Sure, he'd got the rank wrong, but it was still too close for comfort, too accurate to be a coincidence. It had to mean something...
He drifted off the trail, weaving his was between trees; after a few minutes he pulled up his hood against the increasing rain. Whatever it meant, it wasn't going to matter to Starfleet, that was the important part-they weren't exactly in the business of indulging peoples' revenge fantasies. Except this wasn't revenge, not really; it wasn't like he wanted his T'Perr back, like he thought that would somehow fix anything. It was just that he wanted to understand, to figure out what the connection there was, if it was a connection at all. If his whole life was going to be bookended by a mountain in space that destroyed anything daring to come up against it.
And Starfleet was not responsible for his existential crisis, so maybe he just needed to grow the hell up.
And that just got him thinking again about leaving, about walking away-whether or not he let them court-martial him first. Because if Weir really did pursue those charges on him, that was the only way it was going to end, he was positive. He could justify his reasons and accuse her of being after revenge...because that had worked so well last time, after all. His career was over before it began, and even if he stayed out of prison, he'd have nowhere to go...except maybe back to his family, the human side, who had always been so terribly caring and supportive while farming him out to every xenopsychologist and crackpot doctor this side of Andoria...
The wind was starting to pick up, even through the trees; Jonn glanced at the sky and realized the clouds had gone even darker since he set out. No thunder yet, but that hardly meant he was safe; his light jacket wasn't going to do much to keep him from getting soaked if he was caught out here. Cursing a little-at the weather, at himself for being so distracted-he turned around and tried to trace his own steps back to the trail; straight uphill, shouldn't be that hard to follow...
Except the sky suddenly opened up in a torrent, and within a minute he had little rills of water running over his boots. His boots slipped on the litter of purple-gray leaves, and he had to brace himself against a sapling to keep his balance; maybe it would be smarter to wait out this particular cloudburst. He cast about for some kind of shelter, just so he didn't get totally drenched waiting for the rain to die down, and spotted one of those blue-green fir trees that seemed to be hanging over the side of a gulley or ridge; its lower boughs were just high enough off the ground for him to fit under, it seemed, and he started picking his way towards it...
And then something under his foot shifted in the sodden earth. The next thing he knew, he was falling.
He had just enough to get his arms up, to protect his head; the slope was steep and uneven, and his jacket wasn't heavy enough to cushion each little impact of stones or sticks or other debris. He tried to get a grip on something to slow his fall, but his hands only closed over loose leaves or softening mud; and then he was going over the edge of that little gulley, and he could only hope like hell there wasn't a river at the bottom of it-
There wasn't. He tumbled over a shelf of raw dirt and landed on a bed of what looked like scraped bedrock, with only a narrow rivulet of water running down the center. For a moment he just lay there, getting his wind back. "Good job, Jonn," he sighed, as he slowly uncurled and tried to push himself up. He'd skinned his palm on something, but even that wasn't really bleeding, and though he could already feel his future bruises he didn't seem to have broken anything. He was just muddy and wet and completely disoriented. There were worse things.
He looked around, trying to at least get his bearings relative to the hospital. The slope he'd fallen down had a strange, curved profile, like something had swept along the valley and scooped out a whole bunch of dirt-there were even a couple of downed trees laying along the bottom, creating little pools where they dammed up the drainage of the rainwater. It was almost like standing at the bottom of a giant ploughed furrow-
"Jonn?"
He spun around. There was a woman standing behind him, with long white hair to match her long white gown, a white shawl or veil of some kind pulled over her head for tenuous protection from the downpour. She looked old-ancient, really, with deep lines cut into her face and prominent veins in her hands. And when she saw Jonn's face, she started grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, Jonn," she said dreamily. "You really don't leave your people behind, do you?"
"I'm sorry?" Jonn asked warily. Was this just the day for strangers to know his name? First Michael, now this...
The woman took a few steps forward, still smiling. If she was as human as she looked, Jonn would've put her easily at a hundred years old, at a minimum; she reached out one fragile-looking arm towards his face. "Look at you," she said warmly. "I'd almost forgotten what you looked like with black hair."
"Thanks?" Jonn asked, and fought the urge to back away from her. "Um. Am I supposed to know you?"
The woman stopped, smile slipping a little, and her hand dropped. "Oh. Oh, no. You haven't met me yet?"
"Apparently not," Jonn said. "First time on this planet, actually."
"No...Oh, no..." She cast about for a moment, like she was looking for something, and Jonn was just about ready to write her off as senile-some unfortunate old woman lost in the woods, lost in her own memories-when she pulled something out of her dress pocket and pressed it.
A spaceship decloaked behind her, shimmering out of the rain like a mirage. "Come on, sit down," the old woman said more firmly. "I think we need to talk."
Jonn was busy staring at the ship, which was like nothing he'd ever seen before-about twice the size of a Galileo-class shuttle, with a chunky, textured hull and a strangely curved profile. Which just happened to match the size and shape of the furrow in the ground. Found: one asteroid, he thought, trying to make it all fit together. "Who the hell are you?"
She stepped into the open rear of the shuttle, which was kitted out with some makeshift survival supplies-a bedroll, a water bottle, a sturdy-looking lantern. With a smile, she peeled off her wet shawl and reached up to tie her hair back into a long, loose ponytail. "My name is Ambassador Elizabeth Weir," she said. "Ring any bells?"
Jonn blinked. "No."
"No?" she asked, looking confused again.
"I mean that's impossible," Jonn corrected, staring. "I just saw Elizabeth Weir two hours ago, she's not...I mean, you're much..."
"Older?" the old woman asked. "You can say it, Jonn. It's not like I haven't noticed."
"And also she was on Earth the day you crashed here," Jonn added, though he wasn't entirely certain how the calendars lined up around here. Still, Weir definitely hadn't been on Hoff until a couple hours ago.
"I should hope so," the old woman said. She sat down on one of the benches in the back of the shuttle, and patted the cushion next to her. "Come in, Jonn. Sit down. There's a much faster way to do this, and we don't have much time."
"What are you talking about?" Jonn asked, but he didn't see any reason not to take a few steps up the ramp-it at least got him out of the rain. The interior of the shuttle didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before, even on the perimeter-there were the usual labels and signage he'd seen on Federation ships, but they looked like stickers, not an integrated part of the interior. In other places there was a pattern of angular lines that looked almost like writing, but not in any script he recognized.
"Michael's been to Vulcan, hasn't he?" the woman asked while he stared. "I can't imagine that went well for you. A mind meld will save us both a lot of talking."
"How do you know about Michael?" Jonn asked, deliberately ignoring the other question.
"How do you think I ended up here?" the woman said. "Come on, don't be shy. You may not know it yet, but we've done this many times before-will do it, I should say."
"We really haven't," Jonn insisted. "Especially if you're Elizabeth Weir." Besides, he knew the theory of mind melds-any Starfleet officer with telepathic abilities had to be trained for at least basic self-defense-but he'd never actually been on the initiating end of one. The few times he'd had it demonstrated on him by his teachers had been intensely uncomfortable, leaving him feeling exposed and intruded-on. Not something he wanted to repeat, and definitely not something he wanted to inflict on somebody else.
Except the woman was smiling again, almost indulgently-grandmotherly, in a way. "Jonn. I can't ask you to trust me right now; you don't really know me yet. But I can promise you that, if we do this, you'll see that you can trust me, if that makes any sense. Come on, I won't bite."
Reluctantly, Jonn set himself down on the bench next to her, half-turned to face her. He splayed his fingers across her face, acutely aware of her thin skin, how close the bones were to the surface. It took him a few tries to get the position right. If he concentrated, he could already get a sense of her-she was tired, she had arthritis in her hip, she was genuinely happy to see him. She wasn't afraid. That makes one of us, at least. "My mind to your mind," he said slowly, because that was part of the tradition, even though it made him feel kind of foolish. "Your thoughts to my thoughts..."
And as he said the words, he sort of-pushed-
The first thing to hit was a grief so deep and wide he wasn't sure he could stand it; tears pricked his eyes, he couldn't even breathe through it, Vulcan, my Vulcan- Unbidden, he thought of Michael's ship, the burning cities, the explosion of the Apollo replaying in his mind's eye with gory detail. Wraith hive ship, darts, a culling, oh, Vulcan-
Who, he tried to think, tried to push into their joined thoughts, who, how, but he wasn't good at this, was all tangled up with his own fear and confusion-
A dizzying circle of faces leapt to his mind. Rodney, older-much older-hairline sliding back and forth as his uniform changed, red blue gray (his best friend, his only friend, the way a friend loves another friend) officer and civilian, It's a time dilation field- a vast steel dome with a gaping black doorway apt to swallow them all whole-Elizabeth Weir, with her cut short, at her proper age-and now this one, older, so much older, so many years of friendship-younger again, no, with the bun, and making his life hell with her cool contempt, get this man off my bridge no wait-Teyla Emmagen cuddling a baby while she smiled at a man Jonn had never seen before-and a howling white face, a gaping mouth in the center of a palm, a nauseating wave of fear and anger far deeper and older than he thought possible. Wraith. Wraith! Michael...
A film clip reeled out in his thoughts before he could stop it: the Kelvin and the Hive ship, T'Perr's final moments. No... He saw himself, with dream-like double vision, as he was now-and older, with a full head of iron-gray hair and a captain's stripes on an unfamiliar style of uniform. We don't leave our people behind. Older and younger, at the Academy, on the Perimeter, no, both, standing before a discipline board, shaking hands with an admiral- Because it's the right thing to do!
No, wrong, something was so very wrong, the pieces wouldn't come together, a broken kaleidoscope, why didn't it fit-
A tumbling wash of space and color, not warp speed, something else, something bigger-Marshall Sumner on the bridge, Emmagen in her uniform, but the images kept morphing and sliding away: a man with dreadlocks and a sword, Ensign Ford with a black and tainted eye, so much loss, so much regret, no. And a familiar place, a city by the sea, all shining white and soaring and so very, very home...
Jonn broke the meld and jerked his hands back, heart pounding, trying to make sense of it all. Next to him, Elizabeth's hand had flown to her mouth, and she was staring at him in horror. "No," she said. "No, it can't...it's all wrong, all of it. My god, you aren't even supposed to be here yet."
"Was all that the future?" Jonn asked hoarsely, still reeling. It was the only thing that made sense-
But Elizabeth was shaking her head. "No, it's-I don't understand. He's change it somehow. This isn't how it's supposed to be."
That made less sense than anything else that whole damn day. "You want to run that out for me?" he asked flatly.
She nodded slowly, and took a shaky breath. "All right. I came here from the year 2329." She paused, as if to make sure Jonn wasn't going to argue with her, but after the meld he had no intention of trying. "I had been summoned to a place called the Cloister to negotiate a peace treaty between the Federation and the Genii. The Cloister is...well, maybe that's still to come. But there was powerful, ancient technology there-" with an accent on ancient, more like Ancient- "including technology to manipulate the passage of time. That was the whole point of holding the accords there, actually...but that's not important...
"Michael was...is...will be one of out most dangerous and persistent enemies. He attacked the negotiations; he knew I was going to be there, and he's been seeking his revenge for a long, long time. When he fired on the Cloister, it created some kind of temporal singularity...you'll have to ask Rodney for the details, but you'd better give him forty or fifty years to nail it down." She gave a faint, fond smile for just a moment, and Jonn thought of the affection he'd felt in her memories, the friendship, something old and comfortable and pure that he didn't think actually happened in the real world. "I had tried to flee the planet in this puddle jumper here, but I was pulled in to the singularity...and so, it seems, was Michael."
"And, what, it spit you out in 2233?" Jonn asked.
"It spit me out yesterday," Elizabeth said wearily. "Michael was waiting to meet me-I supposed he must've been able to calculate the different points at which we'd emerge-and after he captured me and postured at me for a while, he ejected me and this old thing from his ship on his way to Vulcan. And if he emerged from the singularity in 2233, it's little wonder that his presence has already changed everything."
"In what way?" Jonn asked eagerly.
She looked at him sadly. "You were never particularly close to your mother, but she was a tremendous help in getting you through Starfleet Academy in one piece. She was retired by the time you made captain, but she came all the way back to Earth for the ceremony, to surprise you. I don't think I ever saw you more emotional, except maybe when Teyla's son was born, and you were on so many painkillers then I don't think it really counted."
Jonn couldn't look at her for a moment; he didn't have any reason to doubt her, but he couldn't quite bear to listen, either. It was one thing to speculate idly on what might have been, to wonder but not know for certain, but now he was hearing testimony from someone who knew-He killed my mother. He destroyed the Kelvin. He changed everything. He took a few deep breaths, fighting the sense that he was tumbling down the ridge all over again.
"So what do we do next?" he managed to ask, once he'd got a grip on himself. He'd handle the existential crisis another day.
"That depends very much on whether you genuinely believe me," Elizabeth answered warily.
Jonn raked a hand through his hair-still black, he assured himself, not gray, not now. "I...don't really know what to believe," he confessed. "I mean, I believe what I saw-I can't really not-but...time travel and space vampires? Seriously?"
Elizabeth smiled sadly. "Like a heart attack, I'm afraid."
Jonn sighed. Now that the images were a little less vivid, he could think a little more clearly-about what to do next, and about this woman, sitting next to him, talking like they were old friends even though they'd only just met. Her old friend technically didn't exist anymore, hadn't existed for twenty-five years. God, this was going to give him a headache. "We have to tell Starfleet about Michael," he said slowly. "Warn them that he's packing future technology and a grudge against us."
"You've got to tell me," Elizabeth insisted. "Commander Weir, I mean. If you're right, and the Atlantis is the only heavy cruiser in this sector, then you're the only ones who can possibly stop him."
"Yeah, well, I'm kind of on Commander Weir's shit list right now," Jonn pointed out. "And I don't think she'll be nearly this cool about jumping into psychic show-and-tell."
"Oh, you can't possibly tell her about me," Elizabeth agreed. "It's too much to explain, and it would undermine your credibility right now. But you need to make her see sense. Michael knows enough about one possible future that he could easily bring the Federation to its knees, and he's certainly got the motivation for it. And..." She hesitated, and took his scratched and muddy hand in one of her frail ones. "There's one thing. One place, that's more important than anything and anyone else. And if Michael gets there first, it will change everything."
Jonn still wasn't quite right in his own head after the meld, and thought the skin-to-skin contact he felt...something. The memory/image flashed in his mind again, the silver city by the sea, but then it was gone again, leaving him with just the residue of an emotion that wasn't his own. He pulled his hand away carefully. "All right. But there's just one more problem."
"What's what?" Elizabeth asked.
"The Atlantis left Hoff over an hour ago," he said. "And they're flying without a long-range antenna. So unless you know a way to call them back to pick me up..."
Something in her eyes sharpened, and suddenly Jonn could see very, very clearly the younger woman's face in the old. "Where are they headed? Not Earth, surely?"
"Delta Vega," Jonn said. "Pick up some repair supplies."
"And we're on Hoff, right? Perfect." She cast about the shuttle-puddle jumper, the word surfaced in his mind layered with echoes of many voices. "Have you got a pen?"
"Why do you need a pen?" Jonn asked.
She smiled. "Because there's more than one way to get around this galaxy."
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Carson Beckett had just finished rounds with the patients from that Atlantis, and was setting in to a pile of charts to update and a nice cup of tea when the door of his office banged open. Lieutenant Sheppard barged in, the young man they were supposed to be holding for detention, and before Carson could ask "What can I do for you?" he was leaning over the desk, braced on both hands.
"Can this place spare you for a couple of days?" Sheppard asked. He was soaked to the skin, his jacket and trousers were covered in mud and he had some fisip leaves caught in his hair, but all that wasn't as suspicious as the queer, overbright look in his eyes-an air of barely-contained energy that he hadn't had when he'd been remaindered into this custody a few hours ago.
"I suppose I could, in an emergency," Carson admitted warily. "Something the matter, lad?"
"Sort of," Sheppard said. "We're gonna need you on the Atlantis."
Carson set his padd aside, considering this statement very carefully. "As it happens, I offered my services to Commander Weir before the Atlantis left orbit, and she turned me down."
"She's wrong," Sheppard said firmly. Had he blinked since he came into the room? "I can't explain why right now, but she is wrong and we're definitely gonna need you, and soon. You in?"
"There's one other small problem, lad," Carson pointed out.
Sheppard did shut his eyes then, and sighed a little. "Yeah, I know. And I know you probably think I'm out of my damned mind right now."
"The possibility had occurred to me," he admitted.
Sheppard straightened up, then, and put his hands on his hips. "So I'm going to ask you to trust me with one thing. Just one little thing. And if it doesn't work out, fine, we'll come back here and I'll scrub bedpans until the next starship comes through. But if it works out-if I can prove something to you-then I'm going back to the Atlantis and I need you to come with me. Deal?"
Three things crossed Carson's mind. First, that Sheppard stood accused of a serious crime and could be plotting some kind of elaborate escape, or even simply be delusional, and he'd be walking right into a dangerous situation.
Second, that if Sheppard was delusion or suffering from some other sort of impairment, he needed someone with him for his own protection-and in fact a timely diagnosis could be the difference between a dishonorable discharge and a medical separation from Starfleet. And if he was neither mad nor lying...well, he seemed awfully certain of himself, and of whatever it was he needed to do.
Third, that Carson had a full docket of patients, some of them still unstable, and with the Yorktown destroyed it would be days, perhaps weeks before Starfleet could send a ship to pick any of them up. The Hoffan doctors were good, but few of them had the xenomedical background to effectively treat alien patients without exhaustive background research, and they were short on some of the drugs needed to treat major trauma in Vulcanoids. Which meant if Carson was going to leave, even for a short while, he was going to need a damned good reason to do so.
"What exactly are you going to prove to me?" Carson asked warily.
Sheppard glanced over his shoulder for a minute, as if wary of eavesdroppers. "You'll see," he said. "I can explain some of it on the way."
"You're going to have to do better than that, Mr. Sheppard."
Sheppard sighed, and leaned over the desk again. "We're going to catch up to the Atlantis at Delta Vega. I know a way."
Carson blinked. "You mean you've got access to a ship?" he asked. Hoffan warp drives didn't go above warp three; they'd never catch up to a Federation ship, even a damaged one.
Sheppard smiled that queer smile again, still leaning alarmingly close. "Doctor, where we're going, we don't need ships."
Chapter One
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Thirteen
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Star Trek 2009 (mashup)
Length: 91,750 (total); 6,094 (this part)
Characters: All of them!
PairingS: Canonical levels of Elizabeth/Simon, Teyla/Kanaan
warnings: Graphic violence
Summary: When a terror from out of time threatens the heart of the Federation, the crew of the USS Atlantis must band together in order to stop it. But can they overcome their own demons to stop the greatest threat they'll ever face?
Twelve
"I appreciate you taking time to talk to the senate, Doctor Beckett," Elizabeth said sincerely. The military hospital was in the mountains, high above Hoff's main city, and every window glowed with pearly light, a white sun filtered through low clouds; a comforting change from the artificial lights on the Atlantis or her last glimpse of Vulcan's smoke-choked sky.
"Och, don't think anything of it," Beckett insisted, waving the words off with one hand. "The senate is quite keen on establishing better relations with the Federation; they just need reminding of that sometimes. The refugees will be welcome here until another ship can come fetch them."
"I'm sure that I leave them in capable hands," she murmured, for lack of anything else to say. It had taken just over eleven and a half hours to get here, with McKay ranting about the strain on the warp coils the entire time, and another two hours to transport the injured to the medical center, and the remainder of the Vulcan refugees to temporary housing. They'd crammed a few hundred souls into the Atlantis before they left; a drop in the bucket compared to those left behind, in the evacuation fleet or on Vulcan's surface. And compared to the number lost...
"I wish we could offer you help with the repairs," Beckett continued quietly. "But I'm afraid the Hoffans don't have anything near as large or advanced as a Constitution class in their fleet."
"The supply depot at Delta Vega is only another three hours at warp," Elizabeth said assured him. She turned to peer at the door of an exam room; her hair swung freely, an unfamiliar sensation. She'd had to trim off the burnt ends, and the resulting bob was too short to pin back. "Once we get there, we should be able to repair our warp drive and hopefully finish the installation of our long-range antenna."
"Mm, yes, a bit hard to do your duty when you can't make a long-distance call." They came to the door of Beckett's office, where he paused. "Can I offer you a cup of tea, Commander?"
She forced a smile; now that the abrasions on her face had been treated, it didn't even hurt. "I really should be getting back to my ship, Dr. Beckett. The sooner we set off, the sooner we'll get to Delta Vega."
"You're not waiting to hear how Starfleet takes your report?" Beckett asked, looking surprised.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Regardless of what they say, we'll be heading straight back to Earth. Atlantis needs repairs that can only be done in dry dock, and we don't have much to contribute once the fleet returns from Vorash." She'd included instructions to forward all further communication to Delta Vega anyway. Also a private message to Admiral Hammond-assuming he was willing to listen to anything she had to say-asking him to order the fleet back from Vorash directly, if he could communicate with them. Assuming he hadn't already done it, of course.
"I heard a rumor there were shots exchanged there, too," Beckett said absently. "Though of course rumors coming out of Area 52 are nothing new..." She forced a smile, and hopefully Beckett thought she was admiring his wit. She'd been given a sketchy briefing on the Vorash mission, and the thought of the Federation at war on two fronts after losing a half-dozen ships made her vaguely ill. "Still, if you stay a bit longer, Dr. Traalee should be regaining consciousness soon, and we'll have a better idea of the extent of his injuries."
"I'm sure he's in capable hands," she said; there was one other visit she had to make before they could break orbit. "And our remaining medical staff should be able to get us back to Earth in one piece. Thank you again, Dr. Beckett."
"Safe travels, Commander Weir," Beckett said, and he offered her another smile before he disappeared into his office.
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The mountains above the Hoffan capital were pretty, Jonn had to give them that: blue-green pines interspersed with broadleaf trees in a fetching shade of lavender. A little morning mist was still caught in some of the hollows, reflecting back the heavy gray bellies of the clouds, so that the whole area seemed to floating in a foggy void. He rubbed his wrists where Ford had removed the handcuffs, and thought this wasn't the worst possible place to get kicked off a ship; there was an atmosphere and everything. Like Colorado Springs for the colorblind.
"How long d'you think I'm stuck here?" he asked, turning away from the window to look at the Starfleet nurse who'd officially taken custody of him when Weir had him put off the ship.
She shrugged, still occupied with a padd. "Depends. The Yorktown was scheduled to make a visit next week, but, well...it could be a while."
Whereas Atlantis would be back to Earth in a couple of hours once they fixed the warp drive. Jonn wondered if that was a kindness or another example of Weir fucking with him. "Do I get confined a brig or what?"
"Do you want to be in a brig?" she asked. "I mean, I guess we could ask the Hoffans if they have one..."
"Gotcha." Jonn glanced out the window, at the jewel-toned mountains. "So what do I do until my ride gets here?"
"We've got paperwork you can review for completeness, storage areas you can reorganize and if all else fails, a couple of the Hoffan privates would dearly love some help on laundry duty, I'm sure," she said absently.
Jonn sighed. "Sounds like a laugh a minute around here."
"It's a hospital, not an amusement park," she said. "You can go look for the asteroid if you're that bored."
Jonn frowned at her. "Asteroid?"
"Mmm, yeah." She groped for a stylus on the desk to mark something on her padd. "It came down yesterday, somewhere up in these mountains, and the local authorities have been all over themselves trying to find it. Apparently the space force never saw it coming and the air force couldn't get any telemetry on it before it went down. Pretty embarrassing all around."
Out the window, a fine mist was beginning to fall. Jonn thought for a little while about spending the next indeterminate number of days playing gopher to the hospital staff while waiting for a Starfleet ship to come re-arrest him. "Yeah, I'm just gonna take a walk for a little while," he declared.
"Mmm," the nurse said; she hadn't looked up at him for the entire conversation, had she? "Remember, if you aren't back by nightfall, you're AWOL."
Jonn grabbed the jacket he'd been issued-a jacket, but still not a tunic, and at this rate he'd never get to wear one-and headed out of the main hospital building.
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She found Simon in one of the private rooms, sitting with the boy Chief Markham had rescued. He was sleeping, curled on his side, while a panel overhead ran out his vital signs. Simon sat at the side of the bed, hands folded as if in meditation, but he raised his head when Elizabeth paused outside the door.
"We're preparing to break orbit soon," she told him, stepping into the room.
He nodded, once. "You are returning to Earth, then?"
"We have to stop to make some repairs," she said, frowning. "Aren't you coming?"
He looked down at the boy sleeping on the bed. "I have a duty to my people, Elizabeth," he said quietly.
She swallowed hard, uncertain why the words felt like a punch in the stomach. "And what about me?" she asked quietly.
He shut his eyes briefly. "Your world is not in ashes."
"Vulcan is my world, too," she shot back, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.
"And yet you take us here." Simon opened his eyes, but they were unreadable, implacable, a thousand miles away. "You chose to abandon Vulcan in its hour of greatest need."
"I had no choice!" she protested. He fists clenched and she let them. "One ship cannot provide aid to six billion."
"So you offer it to none?" Simon asked, and there was something in his voice she wasn't used to hearing, something rough and broken. "How many have died, Elizabeth? How many will die in the days to come without shelter, without water, without medical aid? And you bring me here, far from those with the greatest need, because-why? Because of some selfish fear? Because you cannot bear to face what has been done?"
"I saved your life!" Elizabeth shouted, and on the bed the boy stirred in his sleep.
Something in Simon's face twisted. "I did not ask you to!"
They stared at each other for a moment, and Elizabeth couldn't quite get her mouth closed. Simon, after a moment, stood and went to stand at the small window, to look out over the mountain vista and the sparkling city visible below. "My apologies," he said, eventually, in a rusty voice. "That was...illogical."
"I don't think any of us are feeling very logical right now," she said, and swallowed around the dryness in her throat. For a moment, she had a vision of herself going to him, embracing him from behind; perhaps he would turn and hold her, perhaps he would simply take her hand, but either way they could take this moment to surrender to their common grief-
Simon's head dipped, once, and then he straightened again, and when he turned around he was holding something in the palm of his hand. "You should have this," he said. "It is a custom of your people, not mine."
Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to take the two short steps to cross the room. "Simon, no," she said-plead-"This wasn't my fault."
"No," he said. "But I do not think this promise has been true for some time. And when so many of my people lie dead, it would be...illogical, to proceed with this."
"To marry an alien, you mean?" she asked. She blinked; her eyes were gritty from too little sleep, and it might've been a relief if she could cry. "Is that all I am to you now?"
"I do not have to defend my logic to you," he said curtly.
"Nor I to you," Elizabeth said. "I did what was best for my ship and crew, and what was within our capabilities, and I still despair that it wasn't more. But I did not abandon you."
"Never?" he asked archly.
Elizabeth walked out of the room, into the high, airy corridor, where she breathed deeply and tried to rein in her thundering heart. There was a time when Simon would have forgiven her this display of emotion, would've waited for her to compose herself and then come out after her to continue the conversation.
But she was alone in the hallway now, and behind her, she heard the door of the room click softly shut.
Eventually, she straightened up and smoothed the front of her uniform. She raised a hand to her head, checking for the bun that was no longer there. Then she pulled her communicator off her belt. "Weir to Atlantis."
"Atlantis here, ma'am."
"I'm ready to go," she said, with more calm than she actually felt; but if she said it enough it would be true. "One to beam up."
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There were trails, leading away from the main part of the base into the mountains; Jonn guessed he wasn't the first one to find the place claustrophobic for one reason or another. He had to haggle with the Hoffan gate guards just to be let out the door, but they eventually issued him a temporary ID card that would let him come and go as he wanted. If he'd been stuck on the base until Starfleet came to get him, he might've gone AWOL just to be contrary.
Hell, he still could-save everybody the trouble of the inevitable ouster. Hoff had a civilian space presence; he could jump a freighter to the farthest edge of Pegasus and never look back...find a spaceship to fly and somebody who would let him. There were worse ways to make a living.
Except Rodney might still get in trouble for his part in the whole scheme, and Jonn couldn't let him face a court-martial alone. He wasn't that much of a scumbag. And besides, that ship was still out there, Michael's ship...whatever it was, whatever he was. And maybe he should've walked away from it, maybe it didn't really matter, but for him this thing was personal. Not because of Vulcan, exactly-not even because of his mother, who he'd never really known even though she'd been hanging over him most of his life. But Michael had called him, called them by name. Sure, he'd got the rank wrong, but it was still too close for comfort, too accurate to be a coincidence. It had to mean something...
He drifted off the trail, weaving his was between trees; after a few minutes he pulled up his hood against the increasing rain. Whatever it meant, it wasn't going to matter to Starfleet, that was the important part-they weren't exactly in the business of indulging peoples' revenge fantasies. Except this wasn't revenge, not really; it wasn't like he wanted his T'Perr back, like he thought that would somehow fix anything. It was just that he wanted to understand, to figure out what the connection there was, if it was a connection at all. If his whole life was going to be bookended by a mountain in space that destroyed anything daring to come up against it.
And Starfleet was not responsible for his existential crisis, so maybe he just needed to grow the hell up.
And that just got him thinking again about leaving, about walking away-whether or not he let them court-martial him first. Because if Weir really did pursue those charges on him, that was the only way it was going to end, he was positive. He could justify his reasons and accuse her of being after revenge...because that had worked so well last time, after all. His career was over before it began, and even if he stayed out of prison, he'd have nowhere to go...except maybe back to his family, the human side, who had always been so terribly caring and supportive while farming him out to every xenopsychologist and crackpot doctor this side of Andoria...
The wind was starting to pick up, even through the trees; Jonn glanced at the sky and realized the clouds had gone even darker since he set out. No thunder yet, but that hardly meant he was safe; his light jacket wasn't going to do much to keep him from getting soaked if he was caught out here. Cursing a little-at the weather, at himself for being so distracted-he turned around and tried to trace his own steps back to the trail; straight uphill, shouldn't be that hard to follow...
Except the sky suddenly opened up in a torrent, and within a minute he had little rills of water running over his boots. His boots slipped on the litter of purple-gray leaves, and he had to brace himself against a sapling to keep his balance; maybe it would be smarter to wait out this particular cloudburst. He cast about for some kind of shelter, just so he didn't get totally drenched waiting for the rain to die down, and spotted one of those blue-green fir trees that seemed to be hanging over the side of a gulley or ridge; its lower boughs were just high enough off the ground for him to fit under, it seemed, and he started picking his way towards it...
And then something under his foot shifted in the sodden earth. The next thing he knew, he was falling.
He had just enough to get his arms up, to protect his head; the slope was steep and uneven, and his jacket wasn't heavy enough to cushion each little impact of stones or sticks or other debris. He tried to get a grip on something to slow his fall, but his hands only closed over loose leaves or softening mud; and then he was going over the edge of that little gulley, and he could only hope like hell there wasn't a river at the bottom of it-
There wasn't. He tumbled over a shelf of raw dirt and landed on a bed of what looked like scraped bedrock, with only a narrow rivulet of water running down the center. For a moment he just lay there, getting his wind back. "Good job, Jonn," he sighed, as he slowly uncurled and tried to push himself up. He'd skinned his palm on something, but even that wasn't really bleeding, and though he could already feel his future bruises he didn't seem to have broken anything. He was just muddy and wet and completely disoriented. There were worse things.
He looked around, trying to at least get his bearings relative to the hospital. The slope he'd fallen down had a strange, curved profile, like something had swept along the valley and scooped out a whole bunch of dirt-there were even a couple of downed trees laying along the bottom, creating little pools where they dammed up the drainage of the rainwater. It was almost like standing at the bottom of a giant ploughed furrow-
"Jonn?"
He spun around. There was a woman standing behind him, with long white hair to match her long white gown, a white shawl or veil of some kind pulled over her head for tenuous protection from the downpour. She looked old-ancient, really, with deep lines cut into her face and prominent veins in her hands. And when she saw Jonn's face, she started grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, Jonn," she said dreamily. "You really don't leave your people behind, do you?"
"I'm sorry?" Jonn asked warily. Was this just the day for strangers to know his name? First Michael, now this...
The woman took a few steps forward, still smiling. If she was as human as she looked, Jonn would've put her easily at a hundred years old, at a minimum; she reached out one fragile-looking arm towards his face. "Look at you," she said warmly. "I'd almost forgotten what you looked like with black hair."
"Thanks?" Jonn asked, and fought the urge to back away from her. "Um. Am I supposed to know you?"
The woman stopped, smile slipping a little, and her hand dropped. "Oh. Oh, no. You haven't met me yet?"
"Apparently not," Jonn said. "First time on this planet, actually."
"No...Oh, no..." She cast about for a moment, like she was looking for something, and Jonn was just about ready to write her off as senile-some unfortunate old woman lost in the woods, lost in her own memories-when she pulled something out of her dress pocket and pressed it.
A spaceship decloaked behind her, shimmering out of the rain like a mirage. "Come on, sit down," the old woman said more firmly. "I think we need to talk."
Jonn was busy staring at the ship, which was like nothing he'd ever seen before-about twice the size of a Galileo-class shuttle, with a chunky, textured hull and a strangely curved profile. Which just happened to match the size and shape of the furrow in the ground. Found: one asteroid, he thought, trying to make it all fit together. "Who the hell are you?"
She stepped into the open rear of the shuttle, which was kitted out with some makeshift survival supplies-a bedroll, a water bottle, a sturdy-looking lantern. With a smile, she peeled off her wet shawl and reached up to tie her hair back into a long, loose ponytail. "My name is Ambassador Elizabeth Weir," she said. "Ring any bells?"
Jonn blinked. "No."
"No?" she asked, looking confused again.
"I mean that's impossible," Jonn corrected, staring. "I just saw Elizabeth Weir two hours ago, she's not...I mean, you're much..."
"Older?" the old woman asked. "You can say it, Jonn. It's not like I haven't noticed."
"And also she was on Earth the day you crashed here," Jonn added, though he wasn't entirely certain how the calendars lined up around here. Still, Weir definitely hadn't been on Hoff until a couple hours ago.
"I should hope so," the old woman said. She sat down on one of the benches in the back of the shuttle, and patted the cushion next to her. "Come in, Jonn. Sit down. There's a much faster way to do this, and we don't have much time."
"What are you talking about?" Jonn asked, but he didn't see any reason not to take a few steps up the ramp-it at least got him out of the rain. The interior of the shuttle didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before, even on the perimeter-there were the usual labels and signage he'd seen on Federation ships, but they looked like stickers, not an integrated part of the interior. In other places there was a pattern of angular lines that looked almost like writing, but not in any script he recognized.
"Michael's been to Vulcan, hasn't he?" the woman asked while he stared. "I can't imagine that went well for you. A mind meld will save us both a lot of talking."
"How do you know about Michael?" Jonn asked, deliberately ignoring the other question.
"How do you think I ended up here?" the woman said. "Come on, don't be shy. You may not know it yet, but we've done this many times before-will do it, I should say."
"We really haven't," Jonn insisted. "Especially if you're Elizabeth Weir." Besides, he knew the theory of mind melds-any Starfleet officer with telepathic abilities had to be trained for at least basic self-defense-but he'd never actually been on the initiating end of one. The few times he'd had it demonstrated on him by his teachers had been intensely uncomfortable, leaving him feeling exposed and intruded-on. Not something he wanted to repeat, and definitely not something he wanted to inflict on somebody else.
Except the woman was smiling again, almost indulgently-grandmotherly, in a way. "Jonn. I can't ask you to trust me right now; you don't really know me yet. But I can promise you that, if we do this, you'll see that you can trust me, if that makes any sense. Come on, I won't bite."
Reluctantly, Jonn set himself down on the bench next to her, half-turned to face her. He splayed his fingers across her face, acutely aware of her thin skin, how close the bones were to the surface. It took him a few tries to get the position right. If he concentrated, he could already get a sense of her-she was tired, she had arthritis in her hip, she was genuinely happy to see him. She wasn't afraid. That makes one of us, at least. "My mind to your mind," he said slowly, because that was part of the tradition, even though it made him feel kind of foolish. "Your thoughts to my thoughts..."
And as he said the words, he sort of-pushed-
The first thing to hit was a grief so deep and wide he wasn't sure he could stand it; tears pricked his eyes, he couldn't even breathe through it, Vulcan, my Vulcan- Unbidden, he thought of Michael's ship, the burning cities, the explosion of the Apollo replaying in his mind's eye with gory detail. Wraith hive ship, darts, a culling, oh, Vulcan-
Who, he tried to think, tried to push into their joined thoughts, who, how, but he wasn't good at this, was all tangled up with his own fear and confusion-
A dizzying circle of faces leapt to his mind. Rodney, older-much older-hairline sliding back and forth as his uniform changed, red blue gray (his best friend, his only friend, the way a friend loves another friend) officer and civilian, It's a time dilation field- a vast steel dome with a gaping black doorway apt to swallow them all whole-Elizabeth Weir, with her cut short, at her proper age-and now this one, older, so much older, so many years of friendship-younger again, no, with the bun, and making his life hell with her cool contempt, get this man off my bridge no wait-Teyla Emmagen cuddling a baby while she smiled at a man Jonn had never seen before-and a howling white face, a gaping mouth in the center of a palm, a nauseating wave of fear and anger far deeper and older than he thought possible. Wraith. Wraith! Michael...
A film clip reeled out in his thoughts before he could stop it: the Kelvin and the Hive ship, T'Perr's final moments. No... He saw himself, with dream-like double vision, as he was now-and older, with a full head of iron-gray hair and a captain's stripes on an unfamiliar style of uniform. We don't leave our people behind. Older and younger, at the Academy, on the Perimeter, no, both, standing before a discipline board, shaking hands with an admiral- Because it's the right thing to do!
No, wrong, something was so very wrong, the pieces wouldn't come together, a broken kaleidoscope, why didn't it fit-
A tumbling wash of space and color, not warp speed, something else, something bigger-Marshall Sumner on the bridge, Emmagen in her uniform, but the images kept morphing and sliding away: a man with dreadlocks and a sword, Ensign Ford with a black and tainted eye, so much loss, so much regret, no. And a familiar place, a city by the sea, all shining white and soaring and so very, very home...
Jonn broke the meld and jerked his hands back, heart pounding, trying to make sense of it all. Next to him, Elizabeth's hand had flown to her mouth, and she was staring at him in horror. "No," she said. "No, it can't...it's all wrong, all of it. My god, you aren't even supposed to be here yet."
"Was all that the future?" Jonn asked hoarsely, still reeling. It was the only thing that made sense-
But Elizabeth was shaking her head. "No, it's-I don't understand. He's change it somehow. This isn't how it's supposed to be."
That made less sense than anything else that whole damn day. "You want to run that out for me?" he asked flatly.
She nodded slowly, and took a shaky breath. "All right. I came here from the year 2329." She paused, as if to make sure Jonn wasn't going to argue with her, but after the meld he had no intention of trying. "I had been summoned to a place called the Cloister to negotiate a peace treaty between the Federation and the Genii. The Cloister is...well, maybe that's still to come. But there was powerful, ancient technology there-" with an accent on ancient, more like Ancient- "including technology to manipulate the passage of time. That was the whole point of holding the accords there, actually...but that's not important...
"Michael was...is...will be one of out most dangerous and persistent enemies. He attacked the negotiations; he knew I was going to be there, and he's been seeking his revenge for a long, long time. When he fired on the Cloister, it created some kind of temporal singularity...you'll have to ask Rodney for the details, but you'd better give him forty or fifty years to nail it down." She gave a faint, fond smile for just a moment, and Jonn thought of the affection he'd felt in her memories, the friendship, something old and comfortable and pure that he didn't think actually happened in the real world. "I had tried to flee the planet in this puddle jumper here, but I was pulled in to the singularity...and so, it seems, was Michael."
"And, what, it spit you out in 2233?" Jonn asked.
"It spit me out yesterday," Elizabeth said wearily. "Michael was waiting to meet me-I supposed he must've been able to calculate the different points at which we'd emerge-and after he captured me and postured at me for a while, he ejected me and this old thing from his ship on his way to Vulcan. And if he emerged from the singularity in 2233, it's little wonder that his presence has already changed everything."
"In what way?" Jonn asked eagerly.
She looked at him sadly. "You were never particularly close to your mother, but she was a tremendous help in getting you through Starfleet Academy in one piece. She was retired by the time you made captain, but she came all the way back to Earth for the ceremony, to surprise you. I don't think I ever saw you more emotional, except maybe when Teyla's son was born, and you were on so many painkillers then I don't think it really counted."
Jonn couldn't look at her for a moment; he didn't have any reason to doubt her, but he couldn't quite bear to listen, either. It was one thing to speculate idly on what might have been, to wonder but not know for certain, but now he was hearing testimony from someone who knew-He killed my mother. He destroyed the Kelvin. He changed everything. He took a few deep breaths, fighting the sense that he was tumbling down the ridge all over again.
"So what do we do next?" he managed to ask, once he'd got a grip on himself. He'd handle the existential crisis another day.
"That depends very much on whether you genuinely believe me," Elizabeth answered warily.
Jonn raked a hand through his hair-still black, he assured himself, not gray, not now. "I...don't really know what to believe," he confessed. "I mean, I believe what I saw-I can't really not-but...time travel and space vampires? Seriously?"
Elizabeth smiled sadly. "Like a heart attack, I'm afraid."
Jonn sighed. Now that the images were a little less vivid, he could think a little more clearly-about what to do next, and about this woman, sitting next to him, talking like they were old friends even though they'd only just met. Her old friend technically didn't exist anymore, hadn't existed for twenty-five years. God, this was going to give him a headache. "We have to tell Starfleet about Michael," he said slowly. "Warn them that he's packing future technology and a grudge against us."
"You've got to tell me," Elizabeth insisted. "Commander Weir, I mean. If you're right, and the Atlantis is the only heavy cruiser in this sector, then you're the only ones who can possibly stop him."
"Yeah, well, I'm kind of on Commander Weir's shit list right now," Jonn pointed out. "And I don't think she'll be nearly this cool about jumping into psychic show-and-tell."
"Oh, you can't possibly tell her about me," Elizabeth agreed. "It's too much to explain, and it would undermine your credibility right now. But you need to make her see sense. Michael knows enough about one possible future that he could easily bring the Federation to its knees, and he's certainly got the motivation for it. And..." She hesitated, and took his scratched and muddy hand in one of her frail ones. "There's one thing. One place, that's more important than anything and anyone else. And if Michael gets there first, it will change everything."
Jonn still wasn't quite right in his own head after the meld, and thought the skin-to-skin contact he felt...something. The memory/image flashed in his mind again, the silver city by the sea, but then it was gone again, leaving him with just the residue of an emotion that wasn't his own. He pulled his hand away carefully. "All right. But there's just one more problem."
"What's what?" Elizabeth asked.
"The Atlantis left Hoff over an hour ago," he said. "And they're flying without a long-range antenna. So unless you know a way to call them back to pick me up..."
Something in her eyes sharpened, and suddenly Jonn could see very, very clearly the younger woman's face in the old. "Where are they headed? Not Earth, surely?"
"Delta Vega," Jonn said. "Pick up some repair supplies."
"And we're on Hoff, right? Perfect." She cast about the shuttle-puddle jumper, the word surfaced in his mind layered with echoes of many voices. "Have you got a pen?"
"Why do you need a pen?" Jonn asked.
She smiled. "Because there's more than one way to get around this galaxy."
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Carson Beckett had just finished rounds with the patients from that Atlantis, and was setting in to a pile of charts to update and a nice cup of tea when the door of his office banged open. Lieutenant Sheppard barged in, the young man they were supposed to be holding for detention, and before Carson could ask "What can I do for you?" he was leaning over the desk, braced on both hands.
"Can this place spare you for a couple of days?" Sheppard asked. He was soaked to the skin, his jacket and trousers were covered in mud and he had some fisip leaves caught in his hair, but all that wasn't as suspicious as the queer, overbright look in his eyes-an air of barely-contained energy that he hadn't had when he'd been remaindered into this custody a few hours ago.
"I suppose I could, in an emergency," Carson admitted warily. "Something the matter, lad?"
"Sort of," Sheppard said. "We're gonna need you on the Atlantis."
Carson set his padd aside, considering this statement very carefully. "As it happens, I offered my services to Commander Weir before the Atlantis left orbit, and she turned me down."
"She's wrong," Sheppard said firmly. Had he blinked since he came into the room? "I can't explain why right now, but she is wrong and we're definitely gonna need you, and soon. You in?"
"There's one other small problem, lad," Carson pointed out.
Sheppard did shut his eyes then, and sighed a little. "Yeah, I know. And I know you probably think I'm out of my damned mind right now."
"The possibility had occurred to me," he admitted.
Sheppard straightened up, then, and put his hands on his hips. "So I'm going to ask you to trust me with one thing. Just one little thing. And if it doesn't work out, fine, we'll come back here and I'll scrub bedpans until the next starship comes through. But if it works out-if I can prove something to you-then I'm going back to the Atlantis and I need you to come with me. Deal?"
Three things crossed Carson's mind. First, that Sheppard stood accused of a serious crime and could be plotting some kind of elaborate escape, or even simply be delusional, and he'd be walking right into a dangerous situation.
Second, that if Sheppard was delusion or suffering from some other sort of impairment, he needed someone with him for his own protection-and in fact a timely diagnosis could be the difference between a dishonorable discharge and a medical separation from Starfleet. And if he was neither mad nor lying...well, he seemed awfully certain of himself, and of whatever it was he needed to do.
Third, that Carson had a full docket of patients, some of them still unstable, and with the Yorktown destroyed it would be days, perhaps weeks before Starfleet could send a ship to pick any of them up. The Hoffan doctors were good, but few of them had the xenomedical background to effectively treat alien patients without exhaustive background research, and they were short on some of the drugs needed to treat major trauma in Vulcanoids. Which meant if Carson was going to leave, even for a short while, he was going to need a damned good reason to do so.
"What exactly are you going to prove to me?" Carson asked warily.
Sheppard glanced over his shoulder for a minute, as if wary of eavesdroppers. "You'll see," he said. "I can explain some of it on the way."
"You're going to have to do better than that, Mr. Sheppard."
Sheppard sighed, and leaned over the desk again. "We're going to catch up to the Atlantis at Delta Vega. I know a way."
Carson blinked. "You mean you've got access to a ship?" he asked. Hoffan warp drives didn't go above warp three; they'd never catch up to a Federation ship, even a damaged one.
Sheppard smiled that queer smile again, still leaning alarmingly close. "Doctor, where we're going, we don't need ships."
Chapter One
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Thirteen