Chapter Text
The sound of gunfire reverberated across John’s augmented hearing, a single loud pop too far away for any of his companions to hear. It made his heart jump, even as he catalogued the sound. That wasn’t a .9mil or P-90. He felt his Guide’s query, Rodney easily picking up on his burst of anxiety. John sent a warning across their bond. “Keep working. Act like nothing’s wrong.” He ducked out of the control room and into the corridor.
“Teyla?” he hissed. “I heard a shot.”
“I’m all right,” Teyla’s voice crackled over the radio. “Tyrus fired on me. John . . . Maru is his wife. He knows we went to Ardra and that we’re from Atlantis. I don’t believe he told anyone else.”
There was too much in those sentences to unpack all at once, and John’s head swam with the influx of new information. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to address any of it. The sound of gunfire hadn't gone unnoticed. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “There are Wraith headed right toward you. Three of them.”
“I can sense them,” she said quietly. “Tyrus is unconscious—I had to disable him. What should I do?”
He could hear the Wraith converging on Teyla’s location; she would never escape them trying to carry deadweight. He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Get outta there. Head back to the jumper.”
“They will find him,” Teyla quietly pointed out. “They will likely raise an alarm, and Tyrus will die.”
John shook his head. “We still have the plan to free the captives. Hopefully Tyrus will be a beneficiary of that, as well. Get clear, Teyla. That’s an order.”
As she gave him an acknowledgement, John strode back into the control room. “Our cover’s blown,” he announced. “Timeline’s been advanced. You almost done, McKay?”
His Guide gave him a long, questioning look, but he seemed to recognize it was the wrong time to interrogate his Sentinel. “Just a few more seconds—”
“We’ve been discovered?” Cowen snapped. “How did that happen?”
Kolya merely gave the pilot a calm look, all of his emotions smooth and controlled. “How long do we have?”
“Less than thirty seconds,” John said. “We need to get back to the jumper.”
“Done,” Rodney said, snatching up the data storage device.
Cowen promptly grabbed it from him and tucked it into his jacket. “Tyrus, we’re rendezvousing at the ship,” he said into his wrist communicator as the four men started moving out. “Tyrus? Respond!”
Moments later, an alarm started clanging through the hive’s corridors. “What the hell’s going on?” Rodney demanded, tightening his shields around John even further. “How did they discover us?”
“Tyrus tried to shoot Teyla,” John said shortly, trying to come up with any way he could spin this to their advantage.
“What!” Rodney yelped. “How—?”
“Later,” John said, wordlessly counseling his Guide to patience. He extended his senses, ensuring he led his team away from any enemies. He didn’t sense any of the hibernating Wraith wake, and he silently thanked the Universe for the Wraith’s overconfidence. I guess Cowen was right; it is their weakness.
At the hangar’s inner door, they ran into their first problem. A Wraith drone stood guard, holding one of those big stunner rifles. John brought his team up short, motioning them to stay out of sight just around the corner. He held up one finger and mouthed ‘Wraith’ at Kolya; the commander nodded. John considered his options. Killing it would be easiest but certainly not the quietest.
“Rodney,” he said, “remember how you said you thought you might be able to understand the Wraith telepathic communication?”
His Guide instantly caught his meaning. “Uh, yeah, sure. But I’m nowhere near that point. So, there’s no point in asking me to convince that drone to just walk away. It’s impossible.”
John gave him a quick, cheeky grin. “Is it? How many times have we said just that and then done it anyway?”
Rodney gave him a (weak) glare. “You think too highly of my abilities.”
“Actually,” John corrected, “I think just the right amount of them. Trust me, Rodney. You can do it. We can do it.”
Rodney made a faint huffing sound under his breath. “Geez. The things I do for you. Okay, hold on.”
A split second later, John would have fallen over if he hadn't already been leaning against the bulkhead. Rodney swept them away into . . . well. John couldn’t quite define what he now sensed. It was a bit like being plugged into dozens of frequencies all at once and hearing—no, seeing—a whole slew of somewhat disjointed (but still weirdly related) images. Or, maybe impressions. After five hours (or five seconds, hard to say which), he realized he was detecting the telepathic web that made up Wraith communication.
“Whoa, shit,” Rodney mused, “this is really bizarre. Hold on, flyboy. I just gotta find him.”
Nothing in John’s experience could compare to being pulled apart by Rodney like this. It felt like his Guide broke him down into a billion tiny motes of self and sense and scattered them everywhere. Then, suddenly, Rodney zeroed in on his target: the single drone only a few meters away. John grit his teeth when his Guide dialed in their senses to a laser focus.
Okay, Rodney thought (or was that John’s own thought?), now. How do I get you to leave?
There didn’t seem to be any words in the telepathic web, and John couldn’t detect any coherent thoughts in the drone’s mind. While Rodney probed at the Wraith’s consciousness, a strange sort of understanding built in John’s mind’s eye. The drone didn’t possess any real sense of self—or perhaps it was being suppressed—and had no desires of its own. Its existence had been narrowed down to a single thing: guard. That intent resolved as an image of itself standing, unmoving, in front of the hangar’s inner door.
After long moments of probing, Rodney simply . . . replaced that image with one of the drone leaving. It took three tries, and then the Wraith wandered off. John wanted to chuckle at Rodney’s burst of triumph; he grinned instead.
“See? Told you.”
Smugness radiated back to him. “To be fair, don’t think I coulda done that without you, flyboy.”
John made a sharp gesture to his team and dashed forward. They made it to the jumper without further incident, and a concerned Teyla and Ford were waiting. Cowen frowned.
“Where’s Tyrus?” he demanded.
Teyla’s dark eyes briefly flicked toward John before she faced the chief. “He was struck by a Wraith weapon.”
“He may have been only stunned,” Cowen protested. “We should—”
“The Wraith will be upon him, now,” Teyla interrupted, voice gentle.
John hurried to the pilot seat and closed the rear hatch. “Look, chances are good they stuck him in a cocoon, which means he might survive. We move forward with the plan.”
The Genii chief’s suspicion and anger filled the entire jumper, but Kolya, at least, seemed (for the moment) more curious than upset. “How did you make the guard leave?” he asked, coming up behind John and dropping a hand onto the Sentinel’s shoulder.
The touch startled John for some reason, especially when the other Guide squeezed so hard it (almost) hurt. He shrugged it off. “Now’s not the time. Sit down. Time to blow this joint.”
Once both Genii were seated, John closed the cockpit hatch. Now came the truly insane part of the plan. He turned to Rodney, and he snorted at the look on his Guide’s face. “C’mon, McKay. This isn’t the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
Rodney scoffed. “Debatable. This has less than . . . ten-percent chance of succeeding. You realize that.”
“Sounds like great odds to me,” John said with a grin, reaching over and taking Rodney’s hands. “Let’s do this.”
*
John, Rodney thought to himself, was definitely insane. This absolutely was the dumbest thing they’d ever done. It didn’t stop him from taking a deep breath and diving off the proverbial deep end. Closing his eyes, he drew his Sentinel into himself and extended his senses. And extended and extended them, reaching in a way he’d only recently learned to do. Reaching out for that bizarre, quasi-awareness Wraith ships possessed.
Both he and John gasped when they found it. Though the hive was comparable to the cruiser they’d found, this ship was much bigger. Rodney drew on John’s strength, augmenting his own telepathic (since when did Guides have telepathic senses?) sense to probe at the hive’s awareness. Examining it. Building a picture of it in his mind. It felt vaguely similar to the Wraith’s telepathic communication web, but everything was less distinct and more chaotic.
It made Rodney feel ill, and it threatened to send John into a zone. He soothed his Sentinel without any real thought, focusing most of his attention on the hive. What the hell is this thing? It feels like a great big creature and not some cyborg fusion of organic and inorganic components. How do the Wraith build them? He nudged at the awareness, trying to find a way to influence it.
Working with one Wraith, in retrospect was easy. Working with a hive was not. Like the cruiser, the hive didn’t possess a mind Rodney could influence. The awareness was baser, more instinctual. The impressions were vaguer and weaker, but there were more of them. However, having already done this before with a cruiser and a Wraith drone, Rodney understood it quicker. In a way, the awareness functioned like a computer. After what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes, he found the place where the hive controlled all its interior functions.
Ruthlessly, Rodney attacked the sense of order and imposed new images of chaos and disfunction. As if the hive controlling everything was too exhausting, he encouraged that space to just relax and let go. Wasn’t rigidity too difficult? Wasn’t it time to just ease off and maybe go to sleep? He pushed and pushed and pushed, until he felt his Sentinel had reached his limit and was close to blacking out, until the hive abruptly complied.
Hissing in a slightly labored breath, he slid out of the hive’s awareness and pulled his Sentinel close. He caressed through John’s senses, soothing and dulling them until his Sentinel started breathing normally again. “We did it,” he mumbled into the raven hair beneath his nose. “I can’t believe we just influenced a hive ship.”
“Sir?” Ford said, hovering and generally radiating fussy concern.
Slowly, John straightened and cleared his throat. “All internal functions just went haywire.” He gave his 2IC a shaky grin. “Doors opening and closing everywhere, sensors pinging nothing.”
“And the cocoons?” Teyla asked softly.
Rodney nodded. “They’re all open. The hive shut down its own engines for the next twenty-four hours for an unnecessary diagnostic. At least the captives have a chance, now.”
The beautiful Athosian briefly closed her eyes. “Thank you. Both of you.”
Rodney continued to caress through his Sentinel’s senses as the pilot started up the jumper and flew it out of the hive’s hangar. It didn’t take John long to stop trembling, and he flashed his Guide a tiny, smirky grin.
“I told you so.”
Rodney snorted under his breath. “Yes, yes. We did it. That doesn’t mean your plan was any less insane.”
“You’re the one who went along with it. What does that make you?” Teasing.
“A weak, weak man who can’t refuse you or have you locked up for your own safety?”
John huffed a faint laugh. “I’m pretty sure the more we do things like this, the easier it will be.”
Rodney raised an eyebrow. “How would you know? These aren’t the sorts of things Guides and Sentinels normally get up to.”
John’s shoulder lifted in a lazy shrug. “Don’t really know. It’s just a feeling I have. Ever since bonding to you, I’ve been getting stronger. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed,” Rodney confirmed. After all, John wasn’t the only one.
*
The tension in the jumper set John’s teeth on edge as he landed the little ship near the Genii homeworld’s Stargate. He decloaked as he opened the cockpit door and lowered the rear hatch. Cowen immediately gave Teyla a cold glare before stiffly walking down the ramp. Kolya looked somewhat more relaxed than his chief, but John could still detect traces of readiness to act in the man’s broad shoulders. He followed them down the ramp, settling his aviators over his eyes.
A group of a dozen Genii were waiting for them, and they’d forgone the simple farmer attire. The girl named Sora stood in the fore, and her eyes scanned the jumper’s occupants. “Where is my father?”
Cowen strode to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He did not survive.”
Sora’s eyes widened in obvious grief. “How? What happened?”
“I think we should find out,” Cowen said, and John tensed. “Take aim.”
As one, the Genii raised their pistols at AR-1. With the exception of Kolya, John noted. He could sense no overt hostility in the commander, only a mild interest in the proceedings. He wondered if that was a good thing or a bad. For himself, John sighed and felt not one iota of surprise.
“And here I was thinking we might be able to get along.” He shook his head. A flicker of amusement radiated from Kolya, and that did surprise him.
Cowen glared at Teyla. “She killed Tyrus.”
Looking stricken, Teyla shook her head. “No. I did not.”
“You left him to die,” the chief growled. “You may as well have killed him yourself.”
“Look,” John said, trying to keep the irritation from his voice, “our plan to release all the captives worked. There’s still a chance Tyrus survived.
Now Cowen’s glare switched to him. “We never should have tried to save anyone. It should have been a reconnaissance mission and nothing more!”
Teyla drew herself up, and her eyes went cold. “Trying to save victims of the Wraith is never a mistake, Cowen. The Genii I once called friend would know that.”
“Yeah, pretty sure they were never your friends,” Rodney muttered.
Cowen jerked his chin toward the Stargate. “We’re keeping the intelligence information and your ship. Go now, before I change my mind.”
John draped his hands over the butt of his P-90. “I thought we were going to share the information.”
The chief made a rude sound in the back of his throat. “I lied.”
John sighed in mock despair. “So you did. Well, I lied too.” He clicked on his radio. “Jumpers 2 and 3, execute.” As one, the two jumpers decloaked above the tableau. “Tell your people to get back, Cowen, or I’ll open fire. Trust me, you don’t want that.”
Cowen’s eyes blazed with fury as he gestured his men to lower their pistols and move away. “You don’t want to make an enemy of the Genii, Major.”
John stalked toward him and grabbed the Wraith memory device. “Same here.” Turning on his heel, he beckoned his team to follow him.
As they passed Kolya, the commander leaned forward just the slightest bit. A harsh smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth. “We’ll see each other again, Major.”
John brushed past him. “Don’t count on it.”
*
Rodney followed John into their quarters, gazing at his Sentinel’s lean back. While normally he would be absorbed in appreciating the sight, his mind wouldn’t settle and leave behind the events of the day. He found himself biting his thumbnail and worrying the skin around the nail bed, and he forced himself to stop.
“How many d’you suppose there are?” he asked after a moment.
John paused in the process of stripping off his black tee shirt. “Genii? I’d say we already went over this when we first reached the planet . . . but honestly, I suspect there are a lot more.”
Rodney slowly nodded, eyes idly tracing the lines of John’s torso when the man finished removing his tee shirt. “I think so, too.”
His Sentinel dropped the shirt on the bed and kicked off his boots, now tackling his BDU trousers. “Don’t worry about them, McKay—Rodney,” he corrected with a little smirk the second his Guide opened his mouth. “They don’t know about Atlantis. I’m gonna take a quick shower, then we can hit the mess.”
“You aren’t gonna cook?” Rodney said with a small frown.
John’s smirk grew. “You tryna turn me into your housewife?”
Rodney snorted, abruptly wanting nothing more than to put his hands all over his Sentinel’s beautiful body. He resisted the urge to ask if he could join John in the shower; he’d already resolved to let his Sentinel set the pace in the burgeoning dynamic. “Mess is fine.”
“Nah,” John said, waving a hand. “I feel like cooking.”
“Contrary ass,” Rodney muttered with a grin, watching his Sentinel disappear into the bathroom. He tried to let John’s obvious lack of worry comfort him, but some niggling little voice in the farthest recesses of his mind wouldn’t be quiet.
We haven’t seen the last of the Genii.