STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air Read Free

“I’m over here!” Chloe Armstrong somehow managed to remain looking dynamite in her designer dress, even though it was peppered with rock dust.
    Armstrong started forward toward his daughter, and Eli trailed after him, but Johansen blocked the politician’s path. “Senator, give me a hand, please.” She gestured at an injured man lying at her feet. He was one of the number crunchers from the base labs, and looking very much the worse for wear.
    Armstrong was still focused on Chloe. “But my daughter is—”
    “She’s fine, I saw her,” said the officer, her voice all hard edges and command school brusque. “But this man isn’t, so give me a hand!”
    Belatedly, Eli realized that he ought to be helping as well, and moved in to give some support to the pair of them. The woman gave him a nod and he placed her face. Her first name was Tamara; he’d heard some of the other Air Force guys calling her ‘T.J.’ She looked like the type of person who could flick from severe to smooth in a heartbeat.
    “Over here,” she said, and Eli and Armstrong dutifully followed her to a clear spot to put the guy down. Tamara bent over the scientist, and so she didn’t see Armstrong grimace in pain, his face going pale. The senator’s hand went to his side, and Eli opened his mouth to speak; but the man was already walking away, his job done.
    “Are you okay?” Chloe asked, coming to her father.
    “I’m fine, I’m fine,” said Armstrong, covering his moment of pain as they walked off. “Where the hell are we?”
    Eli stood and watched Tamara work, suddenly at a loss for what to do with his hands.
     
    Nicholas Rush took the curved stairs two at a time, almost bounding on to the upper level of the chamber — the gate room , he corrected. His hands dropped to the rail around the edge of the upper balcony and he flinched. For a second he could have sworn he felt an electric tingle run through him, a giddy thrill at the sheer amazement of standing here, in this place, seeing this sight. His gaze flicked down to the rail. The metal was old and pitted, but worn smooth from the action of hands upon it. Rush wondered how long it had been since a human being had stood where he stood now, touched the metal that he was touching. Millions of years ago ? It was staggering to consider. The construction of the chamber was like no Ancient technology he had seen. The metallic structure was repeated everywhere, on the walls and the rails. Below he’d found a console of similar design, but it hadn’t responded to any of his attempts to activate it.
    He looked up and stared out across the room, across the chaos below. Some fifty, perhaps sixty people had now arrived through the open Stargate, disordered and afraid, some literally forming a pile of bodies and equipment in front of the shimmering wormhole. Rush blinked and realized that this was the first time he had looked back to actually see the Stargate he had come through. The white glow of the active chevrons burned hard in the dimness, illuminating a construct clearly different from the gate designs found in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies.
    Perhaps that’s the original pattern, he wondered, the classic model? He filed away the thought for later consideration.
    People were still trickling through, fleeing in panic from the calamity unfolding back at Icarus, all that distance away at the far end of the wormhole. Rush knew that on some level he was supposed to be afraid, but he didn’t feel it. He looked down at the people, at the soldiers and civilians, his so-called colleagues and the rest of the make-weights, and he found himself looking right through them.
    He took it all in, the Stargate, the walls of gray steel and the air of old and ancient days; and it was all he could do not to break into a smile. The only emotion he could bring to light was pride.
     
    Scott had given up on the radio and gone back to doing what he could at his end — namely, motivating the Icarus