STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air (33 page)

“That’s as maybe,” said Volker. “But if we can’t find this missing storehouse of magic chemicals, it may as well be on the other side of the universe.”

“What if we can get into some of the other scrubber units?” said Riley. “They can’t all be filled with this goop. If we can find some good ones, maybe swap out the units in here…”

“And then what?” said Brody. “We have fresh air in the gate room for a while, but nowhere else?”

“We move everyone back in here, seal it off,” said Riley. “It’s not an ideal solution, but—”

Volker shook his head. “We’ve looked already. There are no ‘good’ units left. All of them are stale.”

The conversation went on, and Wray noticed Doctor Rush a few feet away from the group. He stood at the control console, a dour expression in his face, before shaking his head and looking away.

She walked to him. “Doctor.”

“Miss Wray.”

She nodded at Brody and the others. “I imagine they could use your help.”

He didn’t look up. “I’m not really one for hopeless causes.”

“You think we don’t have any hope?” Wray heard the tremor in her own voice.

Rush gave her a sideways look. “I think what they’re talking about is a waste of breath.” He looked away again, dismissing her.

She frowned and took a step toward the Stargate. The metallic ring arched high up over her and for a moment she lost herself in it.

It was something so incredible, so beautiful; and yet this device and all it represented would be responsible for taking their lives unless they could take control of their fate… Their destiny.

Wray glimpsed movement on the upper balcony; in the shadows she saw Colonel Young resting on the coppery rail, staring down at the Stargate. She had no doubt that at this moment, he shared the same fears and hopes that she did.

Greer felt himself waver slightly in the burning heat, for a split-second stepping off the line and almost losing the path of his straight-arrow march; but he caught himself in time and straightened out, his jaw stiffening.

The Marine hunched forward, pushing on towards the crest of the next dune. He would not allow himself to weaken; he had not earned that right.
In the Corps, you need permission to die,
his Gunny had once told him,
you don’t got that, you keep your Marine ass walking, son.

“Hoo-rah,” he said aloud, his voice gravelly and dry. He reached the top of the hill and saw something that made him halt.

A way ahead, there against the stark white of the mineral sands, a blotch of dark color lay in the lee of a dune, cast like a shadow. He blinked sweat from his eyes and the shape resolved itself into a man;
Scott
.

He broke into a run, sprinting down the ridge and across the shallow valley between the dunes. The lieutenant lay there, face half buried, his breathing shallow. Greer saw his pack close by, the dark material of the bag covered with a powdery residue that didn’t look like sand. Acting quickly, he drew his canteen and tipped up Scott’s face, pressing his jaw open. Greer had saved as much of his water as possible, and now he gave it up, pouring it into the man’s mouth, then splashing palmfuls on his face.

“Come on,” he insisted. “Get up. Air Force did good for a change. Don’t screw it up now.”

“Take the bag,” Scott rasped. “The…limestone…”

“Yeah, I saw that. Now get up.” Greer pulled the other man to a sitting position, but Scott managed a shake of his head.

“There’s no time. You have to take it.
Now
.” He coughed. “I can’t make it.”

“Yes, you can!” snarled the Marine. He was damned if he was going to let this flyboy die on his watch, not after all this. “Get the hell up!” Greer lifted Scott and pushed him forward, and the lieutenant tottered and fell again, struggling on his knees to rise once more and failing.

The Marine bent to take the weight of the pack and felt the pull of it. Scott had to have filled the thing to bursting. “Holy…” He grunted and lifted it off the ground. “I can’t carry this and you.” As a last resort, Greer aimed a kick at Scott and shoved him with his boot. “Get your weak-ass carcass up!” he shouted. “
Come on
!”

Eli flew the kino in a long spiral arc over the tops of the dunescape, turning it this way and that, using the zoom function he had discovered. He grew ever more aggressive with his manipulation of the controls; before he’d been content to just make careful plays at exploring how it worked, but now he was taking chances, almost at the point of hitting key combinations at random to see if that did something new. If only he could find some kind of tricorder/life-scanner option, something that could home in on the missing men…

He had the flight controls down pat, though, and so with that he took the kino up high, until it was just a tennis ball-sized dot in the sky, and used it to survey the horizon from a higher vantage point. Peering into the small screen on the remote, he spotted movement over the low hills and locked on to it. Dun-colored shapes resolved into a line of three figures and his heart sank as he saw James, Gorman and Spencer crest a dune, on their way back to him. There was no sign of Scott or Greer.

By the time James and her team reached him, Eli had already put the kino back to its ‘roaming’ mode and run the dialing sequence for the Stargate. As the plume of energy settled back into a rippling wall of light, the woman approached him and held out her hand for the remote.

“I’ll take it,” she said. There was a sadness in her eyes that she couldn’t fully conceal from him. “I’ll stay.”

Eli looked at the device, and then back at James, once again thinking of the promise he made to Greer. “It’s okay.” He told her. “I’ve got it. You go on back, I’ll follow.”

James waved Spencer and Gorman through the gate, and looked back at Eli. “We don’t have much time left.”

“I know,” he said.

She gave a resigned nod, and headed up the stone ramp to follow the Marines.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Incoming,” called Sergeant Riley, and Young looked up with a jolt. He’d been miles away for a moment, at first mulling their options, then slowly coming to the grave realization that they had none; then drifting, back to that moment with Emily. He had promised her he would be coming home, and now it seemed that he lied to her.

He pushed the dismal thoughts from his mind and made his way down the curved stairs from the gate room’s upper balcony, his knee joints complaining with every step he took at speed. Ahead of him, the Stargate had started to spin once again, the white chevrons blazing like beacons in the dimness.

Rush was standing at the control console, watching the origin symbols lock in one by one. “It’s Eli,” he confirmed. He looked up and saw Young was watching him. “We have less than three minutes before the ship jumps again.”

The colonel nodded. “If they don’t come through with what we need…”

“I have some ideas,” Rush replied. “You may not like them.”

The gate locked in place and the wormhole flashed open. Young’s lips thinned; “We wait until the last possible second, do I make myself clear?”

“Of course,” said Rush, as if he were surprised that the colonel would suggest anything else.

Young walked up to the gate as Corporal Gorman stepped through, and then Sergeant Spencer a beat behind him. Both of the men gave him a weary nod; their expressions spoke volumes, and Young’s heart sank.

James came through a moment later and halted, giving him a grim look. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said simply.

He nodded. “You did your best, Lieutenant. Stand down.”

“Sir,” she replied and walked away, past Rush, Brody, Riley, Wray and the others who were gathering around the console, watching the ticking countdown clock on the auxiliary screen.

Ninety seconds now, by my estimate
, thought Young. When time zero showed on the monitor, the
Destiny
would shut that gateway forever and blast away from this star system at superluminal speeds. Any chance the desert world might have had to save them would be lost.

He raised his radio to his lips. “Eli, do you read me?”

“
Right here,
” came the weary reply.

“Don’t wait,” he said. “You make sure you get through with enough time to spare.”

Eli’s reply was lost in the sudden clatter of an alarm tone that began to sound through the gate room and the corridors. On the screen, the countdown timer was flashing red.

“Alert signal,” called Riley. “The ship is preparing to jump to FTL.”

“Less than one minute remaining,” said Rush.

Young nodded. “Eli? It’s time.”

“Okay,” said Eli, retreating up the stone ramp. “Just a second.”

“
You don’t have a second,
” said Young’s voice. “
Get back here, that’s an order.
”

He was still working the kino, eyes glued to the remote, even as he took steps toward the wormhole. The field of vision from the drone device swept the landscape, looking for any sign of Scott and Greer.

The image panned over the tops of the dunes, and blurred past something. “Whoa!” said Eli, stabbing at the control and reversing the scan. The image bobbed back and found its target.

Two men, running as fast as they could, hobbling, headlong. Scott and Greer, a heavy pack being dragged between them.

“I see them!” he shouted, fumbling with his radio. “I see them. They’re carrying something…”

Greer’s voice broke in over the open channel. “
We’ve got it!
” he bellowed. “
Don’t go! We’ve got it!
”

Eli gauged the distance between the men and the gate and his gut filled with ice. Only moments remained, but it wouldn’t be enough. With damning certainty he knew there was no way Greer and Scott would reach the Stargate before the
Destiny
cut off the wormhole. “They’ve got the lime,” he reported. “And they’re not going to make it…”

The hooting alarm was becoming more and more strident as the time-to-disconnect shrank toward nothing. Rush looked up as Riley made the call. “Thirty seconds!”

If they left the others behind, it would be death sentence for all of them, not just the men the stranded on the planet, not just Curtis and Palmer, but every single person who had fled from the destruction of Icarus Base; and Nicholas Rush was not about to die, not after so much, not after finally finding his destiny. He refused to be denied it.

“Somebody give me a radio,” he snapped. Their only hope now was to ask someone to risk their life for all of them. Lieutenant James handed him her walkie and he spoke into it. “Eli, it’s me, Rush. I want you to stick your arm into the event horizon…the ‘puddle’…”

Rush felt every eye on him. “
Seriously?
” came the young man’s reply.

Young stepped closer, and he could see that the colonel understood what he was attempting. “Are you sure?” said the officer.

Rush released the talk button. “No,” he said honestly.

“He’ll be torn apart…” whispered Wray.

Rush disregarded her words, continuing. “But I would bet there’s a safety protocol that will prevent someone from being cut off from the ship while en route.”

“Like elevator doors,” muttered Brody. “Same thing.”

“What if there isn’t?” said Young.

Riley called out the count. “Twenty seconds.”

He had no time to debate the merits of his theory, and spoke urgently into the radio once more.

“
Eli, do it
!”

He stood at the very surface of the fluid-like event horizon, seeing a weird, distorted reflection of himself in the matrix of the wormhole. Turning, Eli saw Scott and Greer, both of them dredging up whatever energy they still had left in them for one final, headlong sprint. But they were still some distance away. Still
too
far away.

Eli gave a deep sigh.
This is without a doubt the most insane thing I have ever done
, he told himself. With a wince, he extended his arm and pushed it through the surface of the rippling portal, all the way down past his elbow, then filled his lungs for a frantic shout. “
Come on
!”

A strange cold-hot prickling tingle enveloped his limb, and he could still feel it intact in there, wherever
there
was, maybe trapped in some weird state of pre-dematerialization, waiting for the rest of him to come through.

Over the radio, he heard Sergeant Riley begin a ten second countdown.

“ Five. Four. Three.” The sergeant read off the time as the Ancient digits dropped toward nothing. “Two. One.
Zero
.”

Rush found that he was holding in his breath, and he released it slowly. A second elapsed, then two, then three, and still the alarms blared. He could feel a low rumble through the deck beneath his feet, but the Stargate remained active, the chevrons shining brightly.
I was right…

“Got something here,” said Riley. Rush saw on his console that the countdown clock display had now been replaced by a panel of warning text flashing an angry crimson. Judging by the tremors from the distant engines, it didn’t appear that the FTL jump had been aborted, only delayed — the question now was,
for how long?

Young barked into his radio “
Eli
! Eli, are you still there?”

In the next moment, two dust-caked figures crashed through the open wormhole and collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap. A heavy back pack came with them, landing with a dull thud on the deck plates. Rush was already moving forward as Eli came stumbling through a heartbeat later, staggering to his knees. He was barely through before the event horizon disintegrated behind him and the gate went dark.

Rush couldn’t help but grin as the young man rolled over on to his back and clasped desperately at his arm, grabbing at it to be certain that the limb was still attached to him. “Well done, Eli,” he said quietly.

Around them, the walls moaned as the ship shuddered, mustering itself for a discharge of power. The engine note built to a rattling whine that culminated in a sudden, giddy sense of motion-without-motion, and Rush swayed a step before steadying himself.